A Match Made on a Train
by General San3
Summary: Lydia Martin's life is falling apart - her parents' divorce, losing her boyfriend, her job, and on top of that she's been hearing and seeing things . . . So she gets on a train and meets a talkative stranger who changes her life forever. Scott McCall leads a quiet life - vet by day, True Alpha by night. Until his life his is turned upside down by a fox and a sword . . .
1. Ghost on the Train

_The moon was just setting when I saw her for the first time and fell instantly in love. Those bright eyes, so full of sweetness and kindness, the clouds of dark hair falling over her face and constantly being brushed back. I halted mid-step, one paw raised awkwardly as I stared at her jogging along the trail towards me. Luckily the underbrush was thick enough that she passed right by without seeing me - but even though it might have meant my death, I still prayed that her gaze would turn towards me and drink me in as I was drinking her in._

 _Of course, I was just getting back from watching her mother bleed out into a pile of leaves . . . that did make things more awkward._

Halfway to Omaha, Lydia Martin decided to die.

Her decision was the culmination of many events, all piling up on her until she could barely move, or breathe - all she ever wanted to do these days was scream, the scream building up in her chest and suffocating her.

But she held it in. What was the point of making a fuss? It wouldn't change a thing.

She had walked out of her parents' twentieth divorce conference that morning, protesting a need for water and a chance to clear her head, but really she had fled the building without a backward glance and gotten in the nearest cab, giving an address in Lincoln Park without really thinking about it.

The cabbie spent the trip describing his children's academic achievements to her, but she barely heard a word he said. Everything seemed to echo around her, a confusing mess of sound she didn't have the mental energy to interpret. When he let her off in front of Jackson's shiny-glass apartment building, she paid him without a word and marched into the building on eight-inch stilettos, smoothing down her red curls absently. The doorman bent his head as she swept past, although she thought he saw a hint of apprehension in his muddy-brown eyes.

Jackson's key still fit - somehow he had never gotten around to changing the locks as he'd threatened. She'd pushed open the door, hope - of all things! - swelling inside her as she went inside.

Giggles came from the bedroom. Not a man's giggle.

She was just hesitating on the doorstep like the hired help when Jackson emerged into the living room, dressed only in a pair of black underwear, deep in a tongue war with a scantily-dressed brunette.

Lydia stood frozen. She could hardly breathe.

They didn't notice her for a long moment, but when they did, they broke apart with a curse (Jackson) and a frightened squeal (the brunette).

"Lydia! What are you doing here?" Jackson yelled, the skin reddening under his freckles - nose, cheeks, shoulders, chest - she had often fallen asleep trying to count them.

She opened her mouth, trying to find words to explain. _You're the one I always come to for comfort. There's no one else._

Before she could even get a word out, he stalked towards her, eyes dark with rage. "I get that you're deep in the process of ruining your own life, but I told you - I'm not letting you bring me down with you. Give me the key."

Stubborn pride would not allow him to dictate to her, not now or ever. Her lacquered fingernails closed over the key and she stepped back, lifting her chin against the fear that his advance brought into her heart.

"You _gave_ this to me, remember?" she snapped. "It's mine to use whenever I want."

His hands grabbed her by the shoulders and she found herself half-thrown from the room. "Out - get _out_!" he screamed, his handsome features rendered ugly and frightening by the expression on them.

She turned away before he could see the tears welling into her eyes and started down the hallway, flinching when he slammed the door behind her. She couldn't help checking over her shoulder to be sure that he wasn't following, and then she stepped out of her stilettos and ran.

Right past the taxi driver, who might have yelled something after her, but she was too far gone to listen.

The scream had been almost too much to hold in there.

She had wandered for what must have been hours - shedding her pearl earrings, her hose, the silver bracelet from her wrist - not knowing where she was headed, focused only on the pain that was compressed so deep inside that she barely knew where to look for it.

At some point she got on a bus - she remembered pressing her forehead against the window, hoping to cool its feverish heat. Her cell was buzzing insistently at her, so she stuffed it between the seat cushions and ignored it. When she finally wandered off, she found herself caught in a large knot people, all hurrying somewhere, so she went too.

That was how she found herself on a train, headed to Omaha. She was in a sleeper car, with narrow berths stacked around a swaying corridor. She sank into the nearest available seat and sat staring at her hands.

There was a commotion at the other end of the car, but she paid it no heed. Her mind was replaying the scene with Jackson - his livid skin, his pale, furious eyes. The lipstick smeared on his lips. _Like blood_ . . . she thought, and her stomach lurched. _Don't think about that._

There was a voice trying to intrude on her thoughts - she shook it off like a fly.

In spite of her efforts, all she could see was blood. _Her_ blood, spreading around her in a stick pool. The harsh sound of her own breathing as her lungs struggled to draw air in and out. How fragile she had been in that moment - and every moment since.

Fingers snapped in front of her face. She startled, nearly banging her head against the window. She looked up, half-expecting to see those terrible red eyes looking back at her -

But no. It was nothing but a man, a tall gangly man with hair in messy dark spikes and warm brown eyes. His lips were pursed as he looked at her. "Sorry," he said, very loudly and with an over-emphasis on diction, "Can you hear me? That's my seat. Number 23."

Lydia took a deep breath and stood, sliding over to the seat on the other side of the berth. The man promptly sat down, eyeing her with a small half-smile. "Going home, right? Just like me. California. Can you read lips?"

She shook her head slightly - hoping to discourage him, but it didn't seem to do any good.

For a while he rambled on about his job - teaching at the FBI academy, which would have been mildly fascinating if it didn't bring back so many terrible memories of her own interactions with the Bureau. Then he got off on a tangent about public transportation and how tragic it was that nobody used it - "Complaining about all the crowds, as if crowds weren't made up of people just like us!" - which reminded him of an experience he'd had on his latest excursion to Asia, tramping around and sleeping on ice, which sounded extremely unpleasant. He blathered on for at _least_ two hours about how much he loved the mountains, especially the ones in California. Somehow this led to an involved description of his family, from the sheriff dad and nurse mom (step-mom, apparently) to the hoards of foster children that came and went. She stared in fascinated horror as he went on and on and _on_ about the many students he had trained in his years at the Academy.

Outside the window, the sun sank below the horizon.

He helped her set up her bunk, all the while chatting amiably about his favorite foods which he hoped would be served to him during his visit home, and clambered into the overhead bunk, drifting into slumber not long after the lights had dimmed.

Lydia could not sleep.

She could still hear him mumbling in his sleep - something about shoes, she thought.

Everything was worse in the dark and silence. The train rumbled and swayed, and inside her the fear grew and grew. The wheels vibrated against the track, and in the sound she swore she could hear voices. She squeezed her eyes shut against the tears and pressed her hands against her ears - but it didn't do any good. It never did.

Someone brushed by her, passing the bunk. She opened her eyes and caught a glimpse of a face that was so familiar, she shot straight up in her bunk, craning her neck around to try and see it again.

"Grandma?" she whispered. Was she finally losing it? Her grandma Lorraine had died years ago . . .

She slid out of bed and padded on bare feet down the aisle, passing bunk after bunk. Everyone was sleeping peacefully - except her. And at the end of the car, she saw a slim figure step out into the gangway. Lydia quickened her pace and followed.

The gangway was dark, but she could still see that there was nobody in there with her when she went inside. The door closed softly behind her, and she stood for a moment, swaying with the movement of the train.

Apart from the door she had just come through, and the one ahead of her leading to the next car, the only way out was a small door set into the accordion side of the gangway. She reached for the handle, thinking to herself, _it won't open. It's automatic - they'll keep it locked when the train's in motion._

The handle opened easily under her hand, just as she had known it would. As hard as she would try to convince herself otherwise.

Outside, the wind whipped by, full of voices speaking of fear and pain. _Death, death,_ they said. _Scream for yourself._

Yes. This was the best decision she could make. She knew that it was the only way to stop the voices, the scream that threatened to burst out of her chest at any moment. She stared into the darkness as wind whistled in her ears and the landscape flashed by too quickly to be comprehended.

Just outside the door, she saw Lorraine standing, reaching out a hand, a smile on her lips. _Ariel,_ she whispered.

"Yes, I'm coming, Grandma," she whispered, reaching back. She lifted one foot to step out into the dark -

When suddenly she was startled by the feeling of a warm hand closing over her wrist, and then she was yanked back from the door to collide solidly with a person who - judging by the pounding heart close by her ear - was all too alive. She raised her head to see none other than the familiar brown eyes of the man who sat in seat 23. He had left the door open behind him, and faint light spilled through, illuminating the worry on his face.

"What are you thinking? Opening the door while the train is going is really dangerous!" He stood back from her, his chest heaving up and down. "Some kid fell and died last year - you're a grown woman, you should know better."

She stared at him, her heart drumming in her chest. He met her gaze, his eyebrows drawing together.

"Are you mute? Can't you speak?" he asked. "I'm beginning to think you are just rude, honestly -" His lips are moving but she barely hears him, the horror of what almost happened mixed with annoyance at his interference. If he had waited for just one more second . . .

A shadow moves across the light from the door, and Lydia starts back, expecting to see Lorraine again. But it's only the conductor from the other end of the car, peering in with tired eyes, which widen when he sees the two of them standing next to the open door. "How did that -" he gasps, then waves the two of them forward. "Come away from the door, please." He reaches past Lydia and shuts the door firmly, testing the handle to be sure it's locked. "All right, let's see your tickets," he continues in the testy voice of someone who is sure he's being messed with. The dark-haired man fishes around in his pockets, eventually bringing out a rectangular stub, which the conductor inspects suspiciously.

Lydia tilts her head. The voices speaking from the wheels are silent now, but her feeling of dread has only increased. Her throat aches from holding back the scream.

"Hey," the conductor says, right in her face. She starts back from him, then holds her ground, feeling the accordion wall of the gangway shifting only inches from her back. She wondered if it would hold her weight if she were to topple.

The dark-haired man lightly touches her side, and she tenses all over, but it's only to retrieve the ticket she had completely forgotten about from the side pocket of her dress. He hands it out to the conductor wordlessly, and she can feel his speculative eyes considering her. It's irritating - almost like an itch.

The train sways around a curve, and Lydia almost falls into a heap.

"Do you need to sit down?" the brown-eyed man says unexpectedly. "I think she needs to sit down."

The conductor grunts in reply, but he follows the two of them back down the car to seat 23, where Lydia collapses and sits with her head dangling. The conductor sits down across from her, a line between his eyebrows.

"Your ticket was only good to Aurora, which we passed nearly three hours ago," he says sternly. "You're going to need to either get off the train at the next stop, or buy a new ticket."

Lydia knows that they are expecting her to speak, but oh - it's so hard.

"You have money for another ticket?" the dark-haired man says helpfully, settling himself on a empty seat behind the conductor, watching with avid interest.

There is a long moment of silence. The wheels run and run beneath them.

She opens her mouth and speaks stiffly, through her teeth, clenched against the scream building up inside. "Where does the train go?"

The conductor's eyebrows draw down over his eyes. "What?" he says, baffled. Her bunkmate is chewing on his lower lip, arms crossed and leg jiggling up and down.

Lydia isn't in the mood to repeat herself, so instead she closes her eyes and focuses on control.

The dark-haired man let out a little gasp, as of one solving a mystery. He leaned forward, eyes narrowed on Lydia's face. "Last stop? San Francisco? You want a ticket to San Francisco." She meets his eyes and nods shortly. "See - she wants a ticket to San Francisco."

The conductor rolls his eyes - at her, or the man, she doesn't know and doesn't care - types on his electronic gadget, has her swipe her credit card (thank goodness she didn't dump her wallet) and hands her a ticket before standing and returning whence he came.

The dark-haired man sinks into the seat across from her and leans forward, eyes intent, a curious smile on his lips.

"Something must have happened. What is the matter? You can tell me, whatever it is - I'm good at solving problems. You running from someone?"

She doesn't reply, but there is a rumble of something dark and fiery building up in her throat.

"Come on -" He leans forward to meet her gaze, his eyes dark and curious. "I'm with the FBI. You can tell me. Come on!"

With that, she snaps. Anger spreads through her chest and erupts out of her mouth. She sits up straight and meets his eyes and half-yells, "I never asked you to interfere. I don't _want your help_. Leave me alone! I don't care if you're going to Beacon Hills or Bacon Mills - I don't care about any of it! Please leave me alone!"

She shuts her mouth with a snap and he sits, staring, for a moment. Shame feels like a weight on her chest as she watches the hurt fill his eyes.

"I - I'm sorry. I didn't mean -"

A grin flashes over his face and he settles back into his seat. "Don't worry - nothing bothers me anymore. As soon as I'm done seeing my family, I'm running away to get married!"

Lydia sat back with a sigh, letting his words flow over her like water. It was going to be a long night.


	2. So What Now?

**Kira**

Kira Yakimura had no pet. And yet there she was, in the waiting room of a veterinary clinic, hands clutching the handle of a suitcase, waiting tensely for the skeptical nurse to decide that the doctor was finally free to see her - all while Kira was still trying to decide if she wanted to see _him_.

Other things that Kira did not have: a family, a boyfriend, a home. She had lost all of those things less than a day ago, in quick succession, one blow falling after the other with such rapidity that she was still struggling to process the enormity of her loss.

Her father had been the first to go. Her kind-eyed, Korean father, who had never made an enemy in his life, had simply vanished from the world without a trace one morning as he drove to the school where he taught history. The public outcry had been minimal - the disappearance of an aging, male high school teacher had none of the requirements necessary to inspire voyeuristic national attention, and apart from a candlelit vigil by his students, garnered little attention.

Kira had uprooted herself from her condo in Palm Springs and headed north to stay with her mother. It was the least she could do, especially since she worked remotely with a graphic design company in Japan, and it was something of a relief to get some distance from Barry. She was nowhere near surprised to find that her mother was completely uninterested in hugging it out, and indeed seemed to find the entire thing more of an annoyance than anything.

"Nothing can separate your father and I, Kira," she would say in no uncertain terms if ever Kira tried to bring up topics such as _grief_ or _death_. "This circumstance is difficult, but not insurmountable." Kira took all of the razors from the bathroom and hid the kitchen knives, eerily sure that this would make no difference but wanting to help _somehow_.

Barry had called after two weeks, demanding that she return home at once. She wanted to believe that it was true love prompting him to sound so earnest, but she rather suspected that it was just that his laundry needed to be done. Then her mother had taken the phone away and said two hard sentences in Japanese, and after that Barry didn't call anymore. Kira tried to be sad, but losing Barry was smoke - it was ephemeral, while the loss of her father pressed down on her like an entire tree.

The final blow had come two days ago, early in the morning.

She had been jogging in the woods when the phone had rung, with her mother's face appearing on the screen. "Yeah mom," she said, bringing the phone to her face without breaking stride.

" _Kira,"_ her mother's voice had said over the faint and breaking connection. " _I don't have much time. I need you to promise me."_

"What?" Kira wanted to laugh - she wanted to so badly - but there was a note in Noshiko's voice that sent her to the edge of panic. She came to a dead halt among the leaves strewing the path, panting hard. "Mom - where are you?"

" _Find him, Kira. Find Scott McCall. Promise me. Find him and stay with him . . . no matter what."_

She had babbled out a promise, just as the line went dead, and she finally realized what she had heard in Noshiko's voice that frightened her so - it was fear. She had never before heard her mother sound so afraid.

Some hikers found blood deeper in the forest, later that day, but even the rangers had given up the search after days of searching. No clues, they had said. It must have been a bear.

 _A bear_ , they said. A bear that had a personal grudge against Kira's family, it seemed. It could not be a coincidence that both of her parents had vanished without a trace, within weeks of each other. She could hardly stand to go back into their empty house to gather her few belongings, and she could not go back to Barry. Plus, no matter how infuriating the woman had been, how uncommunicative, how indifferent she could seem, Kira could not disrespect her mother's memory by ignoring her final request.

The final clue that was left. The only one that she was sure wasn't a dead end.

"Doctor McCall's free for a minute," the blonde nurse called over to Kira, surveying her from head to toe and turning away with a sniff, adjusting her low-cut blouse over her generous bosom. Kira stood, teetering on the edge of uncertainty, making her way to the back of the tiny animal clinic, unsure where exactly where to find this doctor but unwilling to ask any further queries.

She found him after only a few minutes of searching, leaning against a wall of cages and dripping formula into the mouths of tiny, mewling kittens. They are so small that their eyes are seamed shut, and their cries are high-pitched - almost inaudible. He's engrossed in them - a tiny smile bringing out a dimple on his cheek. His dark hair is slicked smooth on either side of a pencil-straight part, and large glasses are drifting down to the end of his nose. He's just about her age, possibly slightly older, and half a head taller.

Kira drifts by the doorway for a long moment, then clears her throat to signal her presence. He turns sharply, hands coming up and milk flying in every direction. Then he sees her, his eyes widened and she thought for a moment that she saw a tiny spark of recognition before he dives down to the floor, hastily sopping up milk with the hem of his white lab coat and apologizing in a low, hesitant voice.

"S-sorry. You startled me. You must be - er - Kira?" He pauses at this, glancing up at her for confirmation. She nods mutely, holding her suitcase in front of her as if it's a shield.

"Yes, I was so - so sorry to hear about your loss. Your mother's phone call was - puzzling - I was hoping you could fill in some gaps."

Kira is adrift by now; somehow she had assumed that he would know more than she did. That he would immediately answer all of the questions she has buzzing around in her head. But it appears they are both victims of Noshiko's inability to communicate. Well, perhaps he can answer one question. She watches as he rises to his feet, swiping at his hopelessly-stained coat, and holds out her hand toward him. "May I ask how you knew my mother?"

"Uhhhh . . ." He shakes her hand, his forehead wrinkling. "Well, I don't really. She came into the clinic a few times, asking questions about wild animals in the area. I thought she was a hiker, at first, but then she started to get really specific." He shook his head. "When I found out about her husband, it all started making a lot more sense. Oh - sorry - your father." He grinned in apology, and she ducked her head.

"She told me to stay with you." She says it, and it sounds stupider the more she thinks about it. She's not a kid, or a mail-order bride, that gets sent to live with strangers. She's got a job, bills, a laptop. "I thought you must be a friend of hers. I - sorry. I just realized how rude -" She backs away and bumps into the door. "I can book a motel." Stupid, hot tears are building up behind her eyes.

"Hey." She looks up and he's smiling, but his eyes are anxious and sad as they look at her. "Of course you're staying with me. I've been - er - planning for it."

It's a lie, but a kind one, and somehow the lump in her stomach is eased. He instructs her to wait by the cage of kittens, and she sits there, cold and tired, as the clinic shuts around her. It's far too early in the day - she knows that he's closing it so he can take care of her - but she can't find the energy to protest when he returns wearing a wool sweater and jeans, leading her out by the back way and locking it behind them. They walk for three blocks in silence, then wait in the sunlight by a bus stop until the bus comes. He pays her fare without a word, smiling and exchanging a quick greeting with the driver, who he seems to know.

Then she's sitting next to him on the bus, still with that stupid suitcase held tightly in her sweating palms. She holds herself stiffly upright, trying not to bump into him when the bus sways or turns, and she keeps her eyes downcast and avoids his gaze. Mercifully, the bus ride is short - less than half an hour, and he gets out of his seat and holds out a hand, which she ignores as she slides out of the seat on her own. Somehow he manages to take the suitcase from her, and she trails after him down the street, hardly knowing or caring where they are headed.

His house is modest - two stories, set back almost against the trees that demarcate the line where the woods begin. She sees the trees and her breath comes faster, remembering that day, her feet planted among the leaves as her mother breathes - her last breaths? - into her ear. Somewhere in there, she doesn't know exactly where, is a clearing stained with her mother's blood. She had not known that he lived so close to the woods. A motel is starting to sound better by the second.

He speaks hesitantly from just behind. "I know it's not much but . . . it's cozy."

Kira instantly feels terrible for giving him the impression that his cute little house is not up to her standards, but the task of explaining her revulsion for the woods is quite beyond her for the moment. Instead, she nods stiffly, hideously aware that this is in no way reassuring, and lets him lead her up the front walk into the house.

He opens the door, then turns to look at her. "Wait here just one second," he says before disappearing inside.

Kira barely has energy to wonder about this, and she glances around at the cheery windowboxes and the neatly-kept lawn. It certainly does not look like a bachelor pad - the mother he mentioned must live nearby. She carefully does not look around towards the back of the house, where the woods are waiting.

Luckily, Scott is back in a moment, smiling at her. "Sorry to make you wait," he says apologetically. "Sometimes my mom drops by uninvited and cleans, and she likes to leave my laundry - er - everywhere."

She nods wearily, wondering absently if the sight of his underwear strewn on the couch would have been enough to make her feel embarrassment - anything but numbness or fear.

"First things first," he continues. He holds out a hand that contains a key, a slip of paper, and, astonishingly, a pink daisy. "That's for the front door and the alarm. And that's just because I don't have a welcoming gift." His tone suggests that this is the strangest and most reprehensible thing in the word.

She takes the objects gingerly, nodding her thanks. She wants to ask where her suitcase is, but she's wary of attaching too much consequence to it.

"Follow me and I'll show you around," he says.

The rest of the house makes no impression on her. Kitchen, living room, bathroom - she nods politely and waits for it to be over. He must notice her exhaustion, for the next place that they stop he announces, "And this is where you'll be sleeping." He bustled around the room, piling things into a laundry hamper, as she sinks onto the edge of the bed, overcome by a wave of weariness.

She gazed around at what was obviously the master suite, complete with neatly-made bed, a closet full of men's clothes, and a dresser with personal objects scattered over the top. It's at that moment she discovers that she can, in fact, still feel emotions - the one that washes over her at that moment is dread mixed with embarrassment.

 _What kind of arrangement does he think this is?_ she wondered, her stomach a hollow pit of agony.

A moment later Scott came out of the bathroom, carrying a box filled with razors, soap, and towels. He saw her expression and correctly interpreted it.

"Oh - no, don't worry. I always sleep upstairs. It's - um - warmer."

A moment later he was gone from the room, shutting the door silently behind him.

She looked around the room dispiritedly. It was cozy, with plenty of light streaming in through large windows, and the bed was clean and neatly-made. She could smell the freshly laundered aroma coming from the bedclothes and silently blessed Scott's interfering mother.

If only her own mother had been like that.

The suitcase Kira was holding held no clothes or toiletries. Instead, it was stuffed to the brim with newspaper clippings, printed web articles, photographs, and handwritten notes. The handwriting is not Kira's; it is in the near-perfect script of her mother, and not a word of it makes sense.

Two days ago, Kira had returned to her parents' house after her run, concerned but not willing to write off Noshiko's call as a prank or some kind of psychotic break. She started calling her mother the minute she stepped through the doorway, but there was no reply. A quick search of the house confirmed that it was empty.

That was when Kira really started to be afraid.

First she tore through the kitchen, looking for a note or a clue, _anything_. Then the living room. She frantically searched through the clothes hanging up in the closet, and was about to sink into despair when something unexpected caught her eye, hiding right there behind Noshiko's winter coat. At first she couldn't make out what it was, and stared in confusion. Then it had dawned on her.

What she was looking at was a secret room behind the closet. The door had been left ajar, a blank slit into darkness.

Kira almost ran back to Barry at that point. It was only the recollection of the panicked note in her mother's voice during their phone call - not an emotion that Noshiko displayed often - that kept Kira in the room, and that eventually drove her into the pitch darkness of the secret room.

"Mom, dad, if this is like a secret kinky thing, I'm moving to Norway," she muttered as she fumbled for the light switch.

She had stared for a long moment after that, desperately wishing that what she was looking at was anything like so innocent and familiar as a secret sex dungeon.

Her first thought was _My mom is freaking_ Hannibal Lecter _._

The room was small and bare, with one bare-metal table in the middle of the floor. Books are stacked up on shelves. One entire wall was dedicated to newspaper clippings and photographs connected by yarn, _A Beautiful Mind_ style. By that point, she was freaking out too hard to make much sense of what she saw, other than there were accounts of at least twenty different murders or disappearances, including Ken, her father. She scans the titles of the books, hoping to find the typical mom-esque Nora Ephron collection, but instead words like _Bestiary_ and _Deadly Poisons of South Asia_ pop out at her.

By far the most baffling thing is labeled, neatly, in her mother's handwriting, left in the middle of floor. It was a katana, beautifully-shaped and deadly-sharp, and the label said _For Kira-chan._

Kira has never held a sword in her life, nor seen one in her parent's house before.

Grunting with effort and fear, sweat pouring down her temples, Kira frantically tore down every scrap of paper and length of yarn from the wall, stuffing them into her suitcase along with the katana. Then she sat down tensely at the kitchen table and called the police.

Sitting on Scott's bed that evening, Kira slowly opened the suitcase and ran her fingers over the smooth leather scabbard and the intricate woven thread on the handle. It feels strange and yet familiar at the same time, when she grips it. For a heady moment she longs to pull it from its scabbard, to hear it hissing through the air, to let out her battle-cry as she faces her enemies - she can picture it slicing through muscle and shearing away bone, blood splashing scarlet -

"No," she gasps, releasing the handle and pushing the suitcase away. It falls to the floor with a gentle thud, spilling paper all over the floor. Kira grunts in frustration, biting back unexpected tears.

As if in response to the small sound, she hears footsteps pad up to her door. Scott knocks once, very gently.

"Kira?" he says softly at the door. "Dinner's here . . . if you want to . . ." He trails off. "I ordered pizza."

The silence that follows is long and uncomfortable, but Kira doesn't stir from her position on the bed, long after it becomes painful to hold it. She doesn't move until five minutes after his footsteps have retreated back down the stairs. Her tears start to flow then, in a bitter, choking stream, and she becomes inexplicably concerned with the mess of clippings and photos all over the floor, so she scrambles around for a while, dripping tears all over her mother's carefully-written notes. It's full dark by the time she's done, and since she never turned on a light, she can barely see her hand in front of her face.

A loud howling noise outside brings her to her feet, trembling from head to toe. The sound travels up and down the scale, and it is close - very close. She wants to look outside to see what is making the noise, but she knows that she is not ready to face the woods at night. Instead, she climbs into the bed and pulls the covers over herself and shivers, letting the tears burn down her face and soak into her pillow.

 _Why did my mother send me here?_

 **Scott**

Isaac showed up first, as usual, signalling his approach just after dark with a rousing howl, vaulting over the wall and dropping lightly into the grassy backyard. When Scott came out through the sliding doors, he was already mostly shifted back to human, his nostrils flaring as he tested the air.

"I had to hear about your house guest from your little sister," he said, a trifle testy. "Thanks for that. Do you really think this is a smart choice?"

Scott shrugged. "Maybe not. But I can't very well turn her away - she's all alone."

"And sleeping in your room?" Isaac turned interested eyes towards Scott.

Shifting uncomfortably, Scott said, "I - uh - took the upstairs room."

"You mean the storage room." Isaac shook his head. "Where you keep badly injured animals overnight."

"I sleep in there a lot, anyway," Scott said defensively. "It helps keep the scared ones calm." His gaze turns back towards the house, where his most curious and challenging patient is currently waiting. He had been aware of Kira in her room all afternoon, sometimes pacing, sometimes crying softly, sometimes going through her things. Just now she was quiet, although he thinks she is crying.

Long experience has taught Scott that the best way to deal with a frightened, hurt animal is to give it space and freedom. He trusts that this is also the best way to deal with Kira Yakimura.

He glances back at Isaac, who is watching him with raised eyebrows. "Any luck following the scent?" They start to walk towards the woods, which is separated from Scott's house only by a wooden privacy fence, which the two werewolves vault easily.

Isaac shook his head, frustration evident in his eyes. "Somehow he can disguise his trail. Deaton thinks we might be able to lure him out tonight using a trap he designed." Both of them glance around - the sound of an approaching engine loud in their keen ears. Isaac tests the air and smiles. "Good news at last."

A moment later, a black SUV pulls around the empty field and into the darkness of the forest's shadow. A slim shape jumps out of the passenger side and hurries towards them. Allison's face is intent and she makes a beeline to Isaac's side. "Hey Scott," she says with a smile, putting an arm around Isaac. "Hey there handsome," she smiles up at him.

"Hey babe," Isaac said, ducking his head down to kiss her. Scott averted his eyes, only partly out of decency; even after all these years, it was still strange to see Allison with someone else. He turned instead to the other person who had climbed out of the SUV; a tall, silver-bearded man with intense blue eyes. Chris Argent hefted two black cases out of the trunk of the car and set them on the sidewalk, then two vests loaded with gear. He handed one to Allison and set to strapping the other one around himself.

"Chris," Scott said, nodding. "Glad you could make it. I know it's hard, coming out night after night."

Chris nodded in reply. "We're in for the long haul, Scott. You know that." He bent to open the cases, pulling out a rifle and handgun for himself, and a crossbow and knives for Allison. She tests the crossbow, shooting one bolt into a nearby treetrunk before making minute adjustments to the mechanism.

"The others are late," Isaac murmurs. "Derek insisted on bringing the pups."

Scott frowns at this, but at that moment a low howl reaches his ears and he turns once again to the periphery of the woods. A moment later a huge black wolf trots out of the forest, looking around at the group with glowing blue eyes. He is followed by five others - a blonde woman and a black man running hand in hand, and three teenagers.

"Derek," Scott nods at the wolf. "Erica, Boyd. Glad you could join us. And you three," he says, grinning at the teens. Two of them are boys - a study in contrasts; black and blonde, impulsive and thoughtful, Mason and Liam. Their companion, a girl with long black hair and an intense expression, is Hayden. Just now all three of them are looking chagrined about something. "You got here a bit late," Scott notes, raising his eyebrows. Derek is just shifting back to human behind a tree, and Boyd pulls out clothes to hand to him.

"The _children_ got distracted by a bunny," Erica rolled her eyes, jerking her thumb over her shoulder at the teens. "Derek encouraged them."

The tall, black-haired man shrugged, buttoning up his shirt as he comes around the tree. "It was an object lesson. I was teaching them control."

"And yet they still ripped it to shreds." Boyd shrugged, throwing an arm over Erica's shoulder and kissing the top of her head. "It was really disgusting, actually."

Hayden shudders audibly, and Liam retches deep in his throat. None of them look like they're interested in opening their mouths.

"It's almost the full moon," Derek replied, glancing up at the sky. "They're still learning. You were much, _much_ harder to teach, if you recall."

"You brought the pups?" Scott grimaced. "Derek, this is too dangerous for children. Chasing rabbits is one thing - hunting a murderous alpha is another."

Derek shook his head. "They're strong, and they need to learn. Besides, Hayden is the fastest of all of us, and Mason can put together a heck of a plan in a pinch. Liam -" he glanced around, wrinkling his nose. "I'm still working on what Liam is best at. Apart from tearing things apart. I'd like to bring them, Scott."

For a moment, Scott considered bearing down on Derek with his alpha power, but he disliked doing that, and he trusted Derek's judgement. After all, Derek had trained him when he was only a few years older than the pups. So he nodded, sighing a little. "Just stay near them at all times," he cautions.

"This is a strange place to call a meeting," Boyd said, glancing around. "A little unprotected."

Scott glanced back at the silent house. "I have something to take care of tonight - you'll have to hunt without me. _Stay in contact,_ " he warned, glaring around at all of them, taking particular care to pin all three of the young ones with his gaze. "If anything happens, Derek is in charge. But Derek, if anything happens - call me." He fidgeted with his cell phone. The thought of sending out his pack to hunt such a dangerous monster without him was terrifying, and he glanced back at the house again. Surely she would be all right without him?

Derek put a hand on his arm, chuckling softly. "We'll be fine, _mom_ ," he said. "Stay here with your vixen - if we find anything, we'll let you know."

Scott watched them race away into the darkness, anxiety sitting like a black imp on his chest. As he turned back to the house, his ears informed him that Kira was crying again, soft bleak sounds, not meant for anyone to hear. She did not want his comfort, and he wished that he could somehow turn his hearing down to give her privacy.

It was almost midnight before his phone buzzed. Scott was sitting on the little bed in the storage room, reading his emails. The overwhelming scent of all the sick and injured animals that had been in this room bothered him a little bit, but he also felt a sense of peace, thinking of all the creatures he had managed to help. He tried not to think of all the ones that had died. Those were the ones that haunted him the most.

He pressed the speakerphone button absently, thumbing through files. "Yeah?" he said.

Liam's voice was broken with sobs, bringing Scott instantly to his feet. " _S-scott? Scott! We need your help - Derek is hurt. Bad."_

The world whirled, and Scott only stopped himself from falling over by catching onto the edge of his desk. "What?" he said, numbness spreading from his chest down to his fingers and toes. "What happened?"

" _It separated Hayden and me from the group - I'm s-so sorry, Scott - he's hurt so bad that he can't even shift back to human -"_

"Just tell me what happened." Scott knew he was being abrupt, and tried to soften his tone to avoid scaring the pup even more. "Is Isaac there? Chris? Hand one of them the phone."

" _Th-they're all carrying him to the car. He's hurt so bad he's a-acting like a wolf . . . trying t-to bite them."_

Scott spoke as clearly as he could, with fear vibrating through him. He didn't know if he could lose Derek. "Tell them to bring him to the clinic. No, wait," he remembered Kira suddenly. "Bring him to the house. I'll treat him here. Liam, remember this - you stay with Hayden and Mason now, whatever happens. They're your responsibility. Don't let them out of your sight." He sighed heavily. "Now give the phone to Isaac."

As soon as Isaac had the phone, Scott's fear and frustration rose to the surface. "Bring him here - _now._ Just Derek," he snapped into the phone. "The rest of you, stay clear of the house for now. I can take care of him on my own."

" _We'll drop him off in the woods behind the house. Can you bring him the rest of the way?"_ Isaac's tone was clipped, vibrating with tension.

Scott nodded. "He'll come to me," he replied, hanging up.

For a moment he stood stock still on trembling knees, hanging on with both hands to the desk. Then he straightened his spine resolutely and ran downstairs to prepare.

Less than an hour later, a piping howl, piercing but weak, attracted his attention. Scott's eyes flared red, and he had to bite back the urge to return the call. He was running almost before his brain was aware of the movement, bursting out of the back door, claws flashing in the moonlight. As soon as he was out of sight of the house, he sat back on his haunches and let out a sky-shattering roar - the roar of command, an Alpha summoning one of his own.

The darkness was almost absolute in the trees behind his house, but his wolf-eyes picked up a dark, four-legged shape stumbling towards him. The chill wind brought him a familiar scent - a familiar scent mingled with blood.

By the time he had made it to the treeline, the black wolf was on its belly, crawling towards the house and whining pitifully. Scott skidded to a halt next to it.

"Derek!" he hissed. "Derek, can you hear me?"

Of course the wolf couldn't answer, merely looking up to him with imploring blue eyes. The black fur over the ribs was matted with blood, and Scott gingerly touched a deep gash in the wolf's side. Derek growled at the pain. Scott winced in sympathy. He understood the lingering pain of an alpha's claws better than most. Concentrating, he took as much of his beta's pain as he could, both of them gasping and writhing from the sensation.

"I gotta get you into the house," he muttered, jerking his hands away from Derek's snapping jaws. "Come on, Derek, don't bite me, I know it hurts! You're gonna be alright, but I have to get you into the house. If I don't get you stitched up soon, you're going to bleed out before you can heal!" As he spoke, he carefully slid his arms under the wolf's sticky, dirty body, trying not to hurt him.

Somehow, he managed to get Derek into the kitchen, where he laid him on the cleared table. Not the most sanitary surface, but it would have to do in a pinch. He kept a good amount of emergency medical supplies in the house for just this purpose, and in a matter of minutes he was cleaning the wound and preparing to stitch it. Derek tried to bite him a few times, but that was something that red alpha eyes could easily solve.

Some things, however, took a little more finagling. Scott had threaded the suturing needle before he hit a fairly major snag. He needed four hands to hold the wound closed, keep pressure, _and_ stitch it up. The other members of the pack were staying away per his orders, which left him rather shorthanded.

Almost involuntarily, his eyes strayed to the stairs.

Not surprisingly, she was near the door of the bedroom, her heartbeat elevated: probably wondering what the wolf-sized commotion from downstairs was about. Scott could only imagine what she was thinking.

He looked at Derek. The wolf's eyes were barely open, and the bleeding hadn't stopped at all. It could be hours-even days-before he healed properly, and if Scott didn't do something fast he was going to lose one of his oldest friends.

 _I never should have let them go out without me,_ he thought, staring as black ooze leaked out of Derek's wounds along with blood.

Scott secured the bandages and raced up the stairs as quickly as he had raced down. He only hesitated a moment before approaching his own bedroom door. He could tell by Kira's heartbeat and breathing that she knew he was coming closer, so he knocked very softly.

She didn't answer.

"Kira?" Scott called quietly. "Kira? Um, I'm sorry to bother you . . . but I really need your help. Are you in there?"

She took a step closer to the door, but still did not answer.

"Uh . . . look, I found a wolf in the woods. He's hurt, really bad, and I can't stitch him up without help. Could you-would you-help me? I'm sorry for asking this, but I wouldn't ask if it weren't _urgent_. I can't do this alone."

Silence. Scott gulped. Couldn't she at least tell him 'no'?

"Listen, I know you're going through a rough time, and usually I wouldn't bother you -" He paused, wondering if he should just leave. "But this is someone who is hurt and scared. He needs you."

He stood there for just a few more seconds, dithering and wondering if she was going to change her mind and come out. But he knew he couldn't stay here forever; Derek was still hurt, so he turned and stumped down the stairs again, wondering what on earth Noshiko had been thinking, sending her daughter to him for help. He couldn't even help his own pack.

Derek was struggling a little bit on the table, but Scott rested a calming hand on his back, pain flowing from the wolf into Scott's hand. He picked up the needle again, took a deep breath, and untied the soaked bandage. He would make do with what he had.

It was hard work, trying to do everything at once, and he got lost in the work, struggling to maintain his calm as again and again the needle or his hand slipped.

Scott was concentrating too hard to hear a sound, but he jumped when Derek gave a small, weak growl. He looked up and he swore his heart actually stopped beating. Kira was standing there with her hands twisting together, her eyes wide as she took in the blood-soaked wolf and needle in Scott's hand. Derek was watching her through bleary eyes.

Scott gaped like a fish, momentarily stalled. She had wiped away all evidence of the tears he had heard - her hair was neatly braided and she was dressed in fresh clothes.

"Uh," she stammered, faltering under his stare. "I don't know what I can do to help, but what do you need?"

His heart stuttered, and a warmth that he had always associated with 'family' and 'pack' flooded his whole body. He smiled at her, hoping it didn't look as goofy as it felt.

"Wash your hands and grab some gloves," he replied. "I just need an extra pair of hands."

He could tell that Kira did not see blood much, if her queasy expression and trembling hands were anything to go by. Perhaps she was just nervous to be around a wolf. Scott gently showed her what to do.

"Just hold him down gently - hand right there." He pointed to a spot high on the wolf's ribcage. "And your other hand here. Gently push the two sides together-I can't hold the wound closed and stitch at the same time." Gingerly, Kira did as he directed, and Scott was able to get on with his work.

At some point, his phone rang twice: first Liam, then Allison. He ignored it. They would get an update when Derek was safe. Kira looked at his phone questioningly, but did not ask.

Scott was just putting the final stitches in when he heard a car coming to a swift stop in front of the house. He frowned in annoyance moments before Isaac and Allison burst in, while Kira jumped at least a foot at the sudden entry.

"Scott! You forget how to use a phone?" Allison asked. Thankfully, she had left her weapons behind, and Isaac was not wolfed out. They looked like a normal couple, albeit a ridiculously attractive one, although Scott could see Kira eyeing them askance, waiting for an introduction.

"Poor little guy," Isaac muttered, striding forward to stand next to the table. He laid his hand carefully on Derek's head. The wolf sniffed at his hand and growled, probably at Isaac's sense of humor. "Have you called animal control?"

"Aren't you going to introduce us?" Allison asked before Scott could even attempt to answer. She looked meaningfully between Scott and Kira, while the other woman shrunk beneath her gaze as if she were a fern under a heat lamp.

"This is Kira," Scott said. "Remember, I mentioned she was staying with me?" He laid emphasis on the words, hoping they would also remember that he had ordered them all to stay away. "Kira, these are some friends of mine - Allison and Isaac. I apologize for their manners."

"Oh, of course! I remember." Allison raised an eyebrow at what Kira was doing. "Remind me never to be your house guest, Scott."

"Where are Liam and the others?" Scott asked.

"Home safe," Isaac answered. "He wanted me to tell you that he and Hayden are really sorry for - uh." He trailed off. "Going on that hunting trip and getting into trouble."

Scott nodded. Of course Liam and Hayden felt responsible for what had happened to Derek. He ducked his head again to finish tying off the last stitch, feeling ashamed that he had spoken so harshly to Liam. It was hard to get a good vet assistant, let alone one that was also a good beta. He knew that Liam was doing everything he could for his pack.

"It's dangerous in the woods these days," Kira blurted out, then turned red. "Your friend should be careful." She ducked her head, dark hair hiding her face, but Scott could smell sorrow and pain coming off of her. It was all he could do not to reach out and try to take that pain away from her. From the look on Isaac's face, he was feeling the same way. Allison's bottom lip trembled for a second, and she reached out impulsively to touch Kira's shoulder. None of them said anything.

Scott started to apply the bandages, and Kira turned away. Reflexively, he reached out for her. "Thank you for your help," he said. "I couldn't have done it without you."

For a moment their gloved hands, smeared with Derek's blood, touched, before she moved hers away awkwardly, averting her eyes to the floor. "No problem," she mumbled, giving him a small, fake smile. Scott tried not to stare as she stripped her gloves, washed her hands and went back upstairs, throwing Isaac and Allison a small, "Nice to meet you" as she ascended.

There was several moments of awkward silence before Scott's bedroom door closed. "That poor girl," Allison murmured. "You _have_ to tell her, Scott. I mean, Noshiko was her _mom_. She has a right to know what happened!"

Scott was already shaking his head. "It's too dangerous," he insisted, feeling like he had already explained this a million times. "She doesn't even know what her mom is, or what _she_ probably is. This alpha has already killed more than a dozen people; if she gets involved, she'll only get hurt."

"She could get hurt anyway, Scott," Allison reminded him. "The difference is between the truth and the lie."


	3. A Childish Thing

**Stiles**

Stiles woke with a start to find that the woman with strawberry-blonde hair was gone from her bunk again. The train was stopped in a station, and he was fairly certain that it was the sudden absence of motion that caused him to emerge unceremoniously from his dream (which involved Malia and was very interesting), but he had learned long ago from Doctor Deaton never to discount coincidences like these. He immediately jumped out of his bunk and pulled on his slippers as he charged up and down the aisles looking for her. Finally he caught a glimpse of red gleaming outside of a window. Running to the end of the car, he jumped out onto the platform and charged after her.

She had just sank onto a bench when he reached her, and he tapped her shoulder, somewhat out of breath.

"Hey!" he gasped. "The train is leaving."

She looked up and sighed heavily when she saw him. "You again," she muttered. "Why are you following me?"

He stared. "I'm - because you -" _Tried to kill yourself_ , he thought. _A thank you would be nice._ "You know what? Forget it," he growled, swinging around. A loud beep sounded around the terminal - the train was about to leave. He left her without a backward glance and ran back down the station towards the train. The lights over the doors were flashing, a warning that they were about to close. His feet pounded against the pavement - he was going to make it -

When out of nowhere a street vendor pushing a cart full of tomatoes cut right in front of him. Stiles went flying, along with hundreds of round red fruit. He let out a cry of frustration, struggling to regain his feet and fend off the angry kicks of the vendor, who was screaming about her livelihood.

Precious seconds were lost slipping around in tomatoes, and the train was already picking up speed out of the station. Stiles sprinted after it, waving his arms and yelling, "Pull the chain! Somebody stop the train! STOP!"

He stopped in disbelief, breath heaving in and out of his chest. The train was gone. His hands curled in his hair as a high-pitched groan escaped from between his teeth. _I'm stuck on this platform with nothing but my pajamas_ , he thought hysterically.

He heard footsteps behind him and spun to see that _she_ had followed, a curious look in her dead eyes. As soon as she met his gaze, she turned away quickly and walked in the opposite direction.

"Hey - _you_!" he yelled. She stopped and turned, eyebrows curving up towards her hairline. "Yeah, you," he snapped, stomping towards her on slippered feet. "This is all your fault! I missed my train trying to help you -"

"I never asked for your help," she returned. Her feet are still bare, and she's barely chest height, but she doesn't falter under his glare. "Who asked you to get off the train anyway?"

Stiles is so frustrated that his anger bursts out of him, directed at her tiny form. "I was trying to help you! You should be _thanking_ me! And instead you just give me this - this _attitude_?"

Her eyes are glittering with rage. "Thank you! Thank you so much! Now please _kindly_ leave me alone!"

"Oh no!" He laughs, even angrier than before. "Don't think you're getting out of this so easily. I wasn't raised to be cowed by some spoiled rich girl who thinks that the world revolves around her - I'm a _Stilinski_ and we always get our man!"

She met his gaze for a long moment. And then she turned and ran.

He was stunned. Then he gave chase. "Thief, _thief_ ," he yelled after her, "stop that thief!"

Stiles is impressed by how fast she is, and he has to run at full speed just to keep her in sight as she charges through the nearly-empty station, up stairs and across an overpass to a taxi stand on the other side of the interstate. As he comes up the stairs, he sees a security guard strolling towards them and he shouts, "Catch her - she's a thief!"

The guard stares as she hurtles by him, and Stiles groans. "I'm coming back for your badge number," he threatens as he runs by. The guard looks suitably ashamed.

Stiles takes the stairs two at a time and skids to a halt, looking around for her. He is startled to find her standing next to a battered taxicab, waving at him. "Get in!" she called.

By the time Stiles reaches her, she's already settled into the front seat, so he folds himself into the back. His heart's still pounding, so it takes him a moment to notice that they are going slowly - very slowly.

"What are you doing?" He leans forward in his seat and grips the back of the driver's headrest. "We need to get there - _today_!"

"This is the speed limit," is the reply. Stiles gapes at a sign they are passing at 30 that clearly says SPEED LIMIT 60 MPH.

"Hurry hurry hurry hurry!" he demands, slapping the top of the front seat. "We have to catch the train!"

"The next stop is Hastings," the driver said in a flat, disinterested voice. "That's 100 miles - you'll never make it in time to catch the train."

Stiles stares, then turns to the redheaded woman. "Is this guy for real?"

She says nothing for a moment, watching as the landscape crawls by. Finally she turns to the driver. "Stop the car,"she says.

He shoots a surprised look in her direction, but obediently pulls the taxi to the side of the road.

She gets out of the car and walks around to the driver's side while Stiles and the driver watched curiously. When she reaches the driver's door, she pulls it open and leans down to look in.

"Move over," she said in a tone that brooked no argument. The driver slid over, his eyes wide, and both he and Stiles watched in amazement as she settled herself into the driver's seat, adjusting the height until her bare feet resting lightly on the petals. She took in a deep breath and curled her fingers over the steering wheel - then the car took off as if shot from a rocket.

Stiles is slung around in the backseat like a ball bearing in a pinball machine. As soon as he is able to grip the front seat, he pulls himself upright, a grin stretching across his face.

The driver is nearly crying. "Lady! Please! I'll lose my licence - this taxi is all I have -"

"This isn't just any lady, dude!" Stiles tells back at him over the screeching of the tires, nearly passing out from the G-forces as she hurtles around a steep curve. "Can't you tell she's rich from the way she drives? She's probably never paid a traffic ticket in her life!" He unclenches one hand from its grip on the seat long enough to reach into his pocket and pull out a business card, which the driver takes hesitantly. "And if there's any damage to the car, send me the bill - I'll make sure she pays."

The taxi screeches to a stop at Hastings station less than an hour later. Even before it stops, Stiles jumps out of the car and races up the steps, the redhead right behind him.

The driver lets out a howl. "My fare!" he shrieks. "You forgot to pay me!"

Everyone in the station looks around as they stumble inside, a man in his pajamas and a woman in business dress, with the screaming taxi driver on their heels. A large group of rough-looking men and women gathered by the entrance take special note, whispering among themselves and pointing. Stiles doesn't care; he lets out a sigh of relief, while the woman clutched a stitch in her side. The train was there, waiting.

He touched her arm, panting. "Can you lend me like five bucks for water? I'll pay you back on the train."

"Hurry or you'll miss it again," she returns, glaring.

"You're getting on too, right?" He asks, surprised by how concerned he still is about her.

"Don't worry about me anymore, all right?" she gasps, fishing a $10 out of her wallet. "Just go - get on the train. I'll be fine." She turns with an exclamation of annoyance to the taxi driver, who is still yelling by her elbow. "I'll pay you - quit complaining."

Stiles heads to a nearby concession stand and grabs a bottle of water from the fridge. He gapes at the price on the label.

"$3.65 for a bottle of water? Are you serious? Train tickets cost less!"

The woman behind the counter surveyed him with a bored expression. "That's the price, sweetheart. You want one or not?"

His throat is so parched that it feels like sandpaper. Reluctantly, he hands over the ten, returning her glare for glare. "Maybe I should call the consumer court and ask what the price is," he says, watching like a hawk as she counts out his change. "You shorted me a nickel," he advises her.

She slams the register shut and counts every red cent into his palm, finishing up with a sickly-sweet, "Have a nice _trip_ , sir."

He takes his time opening the water bottle in front of her, spilling some onto her magazine, then drinks a long draught, maintaining eye contact the entire time. Her smile grows vicious and her long nails tap against the counter.

And that was when he heard it; the rumbling of wheels behind him, the final warning sounding over the PA system. He turns slowly and a low scream comes out of his mouth involuntarily - the train is halfway out of the station, picking up speed.

He gapes for a moment, too shocked to really process what he is seeing. He catches a glimpse of the concession stand lady staring at him as he bolts after it.

" _WAIT,_ " he screams futilely. "Someone pull the chain! _Stop the train!_ "

But it was far too late.

There was nothing he could do but watch helplessly as the lights vanished into the distance. He sank down onto his haunches, hands pulling at his hair, and let out a low groan - he had missed the train. _Again_.

It doesn't take long before Stiles hates Hastings, Iowa, almost as much as he hates DC traffic and exercise.

"I've phoned ahead to Salt Lake and told them to hold your luggage." The station master waggled one finger. "What were you thinking, young man? Getting off the train - this is not a safe part of town! People have been disappearing from right off the street. Young people, you're all the same - you think you're invincible."

Stiles shifted forward in his chair, feigning interest. "Tell me," he said in a light tone, "this education you're so generously providing - do you charge for it, or does it come free?"

The station master smiled. "Free, of course."

"Good," Stiles banged out of his chair and stalked to the door. "I don't have any small change."

Outside of the station master's office, Stiles took stock of his situation. He was in pajamas (which consisted of a t-shirt and sweatpants) and slippered feet; no wallet, no cell phone, no money except for $6.35, which would have done him a lot of good if there'd been a working payphone in the place.

An idea occurs to him, and he goes outside to where the taxi is still parked. He tries to smile in a friendly fashion and raises his arm, but as soon as the cabbie glimpses him he takes off, veering around the corner.

"What's _his_ problem," Stiles mutters.

There's not a lot left to do except wait for the next train. He shuffles back to the platform and sinks onto an unoccupied bench, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his fingers twiddling restlessly together. His mind is going 200mph as usual, and he can't help but think about what the station master said - " _People have been disappearing from right off the street . . ._ "

Unfortunately, it reminds him of a case he's been researching recently, fifteen men and women attacked or mauled up and down the East coast, and now six more with a similar MO on the West. It's one of the reasons that he's headed home, and he can't keep the grisly crime scene photos out of his head.

 _That's not gonna be you, Stiles,_ he tells himself, his hand going to the pouch strung around his neck.

So deep in his thought is he that he shrieks and nearly topples off the bench when someone sits next to him. He spins, ready for a fight - but it's only the clerk from the concession stand, eying him askance as she sets his mostly-full water bottle on the bench between them.

"Don't want you thinking I'm a thief," she says, rolling her eyes at his alarm. "It's a shame, what happened."

There's a gleam in her eye that he takes to be sarcasm, and he snaps, "I'd like to be alone, if you don't mind."

Another voice chimes in. "What's going on, Candy?" The janitor pulls out his earbuds and takes a few steps nearer, leaning on his broom, his white-stubbled face curious. "He being a bother?"

"Hey fella, it's the other way around," Stiles snaps back, turning away from the two of them. He knows instantly that this is a bad move by the prickly feeling of hairs beginning to rise on the back of his neck.

"Smells good, doesn't he, Jeff?" Candy murmurs, and the bench creaks as she moves closer.

The janitor's answering chuckle sends a chill racing up Stiles' spine. "Like fear."

Slowly, Stiles turns back to face them. His heart is hammering and his entire body feels stiff and heavy, as if his muscles have turned into wet sand. The two people facing him look the same - concession stand employee with glasses and a green vest tugged over her generous figure, and right behind her is a balding guy with skinny arms holding a mop. But they are both looking at him with identical hungry smiles, and his own body's response is enough evidence to convince him that what he's looking at is not as innocent as it seems.

Candy lets out a low chuckle, shaking her head slowly. "Boy, you got yourself a whole heaping mess of trouble," she said, turning eyes towards him that are glowing purple. Fangs sprout down past her lower lip, and her face is icy pale, with lips as red as blood. Jeff is in a similar state, and he passes his tongue over the sharp points of his teeth with a grin.

Stiles doesn't know what possesses him in that moment, but he's got his fists up as if this were a boxing match rather than a staring match with something evil and hungry.

Jeff lets out a short laugh. "I think it wants to play, Candy," he says. "How amusing."

She considers Stiles with pursed lips, her eyes alight with hunger and amusement. "Oh go on then, punch me," she giggles. "It'll be fun."

Stiles stares at her, his mind a roaring hollow of white noise. _Boy, I wish Scott were here to see this. Or stop it, whatever._ "Yeah, no, I don't think so," he mumbles, jumping to his feet and racing towards the door to the street.

He makes it exactly two steps before vise-like hands seize him and throw him violently to the ground. Jeff looms over him, hissing like a cobra, mouth open wide to display those teeth, sharp nails digging into Stiles' arm.

Candy's face appears next to Jeff's. "Oh but Jeff," she pouts. "I do _love_ it when they run."

The claws release his arm, and he scrambles to his feet, heart thundering madly in his ears. He looks between them, shuddering at their identical mad grins.

"You want me to run?" Stiles shrugs. "I can do that."

He makes it to the street this time, with their sibilant giggles following close behind, but there is no one around to ask for help. He has no choice now, so Stiles finally reaches for the pouch hanging around his neck. Tearing it off, he dumps the fine black powder inside into the palm of his hand, then tosses it into the air in a smooth, continuous motion. Instead of scattering, it falls on every side of him in an even layer until he is standing in a perfect circle of black dust. His two pursuers rush at him, slam into what appears to be a wall of pure energy, and fall back.

"Mountain ash?" Candy spits out the words and her eyes flash even brighter. "That won't keep us away for long. You've bought yourself minutes, at the most."

"Wait a moment," Jess cuts in, his eyes surveying Stiles with interest. "I thought I recognized you."

"I just have one of those faces," Stiles says, chuckling weakly, brain whirring frantically after a solution. He's painfully aware that they are pitifully few. If _only_ he had the kit in his suitcase, but that's currently on its way to Omaha without him.

"You're one of McCall's," Jeff said in a thoughtful voice. "The human."

"Druid," Stiles corrected him. "Well - kinda. In training . . . kinda-training. I'm on sabbatical. Permanent . . . sabbatical." He sighed. "It wasn't as interesting as I thought? I took a vacation and just . . . never . . . went back."

Jeff glances over at Candy, the glow in his eyes dimming a little. "This might not be a wise decision," he says. "If words gets out to the dogs that we're hunting here - we could lose everything. And I've heard that McCall isn't one to cross - especially where his pack is concerned."

An indelicate snort comes out of Candy's mouth. "I never thought I'd hear _you_ preaching caution, especially where dogs are concerned. A century ago you'd have been drenched in his blood by this point, sending his fingers to the alpha as a challenge."

"None of us are as strong as we used to be," he mutters, lowering his gaze away from hers. "And McCall is a true Alpha - who knows what he can do to two old bloodsuckers like us, surviving on the dregs of humanity."

A loud _hah_! bursts out of Stiles before he can stop it. Both of them turn to stare at him in astonishment.

"You're vampires." He glances between them, a smile clinging to the corners of his mouth in spite of himself. " _Rad_. I mean, terrifying of course. Don't doubt your menacing powers, it's just that . . . _wow_. I - this is a first. And I don't get to say that a lot."

 _I hope I'll get to tell Scott that I won the bet_ , he thinks.

"See how this bag of blood disrespects us?" Candy's snarl is widening - no more smiles on her lips. Her eyes are glittering with rage, devouring. "I would rather die in a blood feud with a thousand dogs than allow a single human to address me in that fashion. I'll teach him fear if it's the last thing I do!"

Stiles almost jumps back as she launches herself at him again, but instead of ricocheting off his mountain ash barrier, she latches her talons into the light and begins to push her way through.

 _I've got about thirty seconds to come up with a brilliant plan,_ Stiles realizes, but even his trained deducting brain is paralyzed by the sight before him. The vampire was mere inches away, her eyes fixed on his face with desperate hunger and rage, her teeth bared in preparation to strike, her hands outstretched towards his throat.

Her claws come through the light millimeter by millimeter, and then the wall gives with a blinding flash and a cloud of displaced mountain ash dust.

By that point, Stiles is already running.

There is still no brilliant plan, but he's pretty sure that running is the best option he's got right now. So he runs like he never ran before, feet slamming against the pavement, arms clawing through the air as if it's water, mouth open in a gasp.

 _Coach would be proud_ , he thinks distantly, in a small corner of his mind.

The rest of him is concentrating furiously on not dying in the next few minutes. He hasn't had time to do much research on the situation, unfortunately, apart from some half-remembered legends from more than a decade ago.

 _A jewelers,_ he thinks frantically. _Or an Italian restaurant._

Of course it's past midnight, so if any of the stores blurring past him are either of those things, they are locked tightly away behind iron chains and grates.

The answer came to him in the form of a slight figure glimpsed through the light fog. Red hair glinted in a streetlight. He sprinted after her, nearly knocking her over from behind. She gasped and stepped away, her eyes going cold when she saw his face.

"What - You missed your train again?" she said, sighing deeply.

He clutched at his side, gasping for air. The vampires are shadows slinking closer, hissing voices promising death and blood, gallons of it. Apparently they aren't shy about witnesses, not that he imagines they intend to leave any.

"Y-you got any silver?" he manages to pant at her. "A cross necklace? Garlic in any form?"

She ignores this, which is probably the response it deserves. Her eyes have focused behind him, and he tries not to imagine what she is seeing. Not that he has to imagine it.

"Who are they?" she sounds mildly annoyed rather than frightened. "Made some more friends, have you?"

Jeff hisses from behind Stiles, and he whips around immediately, putting himself between the two spectres and the redhead. "Your quarrel is with me, remember?" he says, trying for light-heartedness. "Let her go."

Candy laughs softly. "Just because you said that, little Druid, I'm going to suck the marrow from her bones."

"What is _going on_ ," the woman wonders, fear coloring her voice. Stiles glances around at her just as she gets a good look at Candy's face and her jaw drops. " _What is going on_ ," she wonders at a louder volume.

"Oh, you're about to find out," Candy drawls. She steps towards them.

Suddenly, Jeff's hand snakes out and grips Candy's arm. She turns towards him, annoyance twisting her face.

"Don't make me call you coward," she hisses.

"It's not the boy," he replied, his eyes fixed on the redhaired woman's pale face. "There's something about _her_ -"

"Get your hands off me," Candy snaps, tearing herself out of his grip and rounding on the two humans once more.

Stiles braces himself for the end.

Well, it comes, but not in the way he's expecting.

Before the concession stand worker can take even one more step, the redhaired woman screams. It's not like Stiles has heard it in movies, either - this is an ear-shattering, earthquake-inducing, heart-stopping, blackout-inducing kind of scream. Stiles' knees hit the asphalt before he's even aware that he's falling, and his hands are clamped so tightly over his ears that he can feel the pulse in both ear and palm as a kind of four-four beat, but it makes no difference. Her scream is vibrating through his skull, shaking his brains loose, turning his bones into jelly . . .

When Stiles is able to take his hands off his ears and get up off the ground, there's no one to be seen but the woman, who staggers back as if dazed. He jumps to his feet and grabs her arms to steady her, bending his head to look at her face.

"What the - are you ok?" he asks, or at least he _thinks_ that's what he says. He still can't hear much over the ringing in his ears. He glances around, astounded to see that both of the terrifying creatures that had been menacing them were gone without a trace. "How did you do that?"

She shakes his hands off and steps back, cheeks pale, hands shaking as they rub her arms. "Oh no - I'm going first," she cries. "What were those things?"

Stiles passes a hand through his hair. "Um . . . vampires." She stares incredulously, and he shrugs. "You asked." He stuck out a hand. "Hi - I'm Stiles."

She looked as if she were considering not taking it, but then did anyway with a sigh. "Lydia," she said in reply.

"Listen, all of these problems are your fault," he said through a grin. "I would never have missed my train in the first place if you hadn't gotten off, and I'm still not sure I can trust you not to throw yourself in front of a bus. Plus now there's a couple of pissed-off vampires after us, and you're the only thing I've got that I know they're scared of. So here's what's going to happen - you're going to get me to my family's home in Beacon Hills, California, come what may, even if we have to walk the whole way."

She blinked, color slowly returning to her cheeks as she stared at him.

"Come on," he said, taking her hand and gesturing for her to follow. "You can get mad at me while we're walking, if you want."

 **Lydia**

The bus stand isn't much of an improvement to the train station, but at least it's got a place to sit. Lydia sinks onto the bench, exhausted, ignoring her new traveling companion's noisy examination of the bus schedule. Finally he sinks down next to her, and she does her best to pretend that he isn't there.

"Bad news," Stiles informed her. "The next bus heading west isn't leaving until 6AM, and it's now . . ." He shook back his sleeve to check his watch. "2:34AM. So we've got some time to burn."

"Please tell me we're going to burn it by sleeping," she mutters. "And _not_ on this bench." Her throat aches and her hands are still shaking, but she speaks as fiercely as she can to mask those facts. Those are just two of many facts that she isn't capable of facing just at the moment.

He shifts and she cracks an eyelid to see that he's nodding in agreement. "Yeah, I'm tired - how about a hotel?"

"A hotel?" She laughs slightly. "In _this_ town?"

"We'll never know until we look," he says with exhausting optimism, but somehow he drags her to her feet and down the dark streets again.

They're both right, after a fashion. Stiles is right that they do find something after nearly a half-hour of weary tramping all over the depressing streets of Hastings, and Lydia is right about everything else. She takes in the flickering neon sign spelling out "Hotel Decent" and the peeling paint on the fake shutters, but follows him in without more than a sigh of resignation.

There is a desk clerk perched on a stool who looks up as they approach.

"We need a room for the night," Lydia tells him, fishing in her purse for her wallet.

"You want the daily rate? Or the, uh . . . hourly rate?" he asks, his eyes speculative as he looks between the two of them.

"Well that's economical," Stiles says with a grin. "I told you this place would work."

Lydia tries to protest. "I don't think you understand what -"

"We don't need it for the whole night," Stiles said. "Two hours?" He looked over at Lydia, who shrugs, holding back a grin. "Three hours is more than enough. See, I'm trying to economize my use of your money," he says triumphantly, waltzing off towards the stairs.

The receptionist grins, then winks as he hands Lydia a key. "Nice - where'd you pick him up? Not in _this_ town."

Lydia leans closer and whispers back, "On the train."

The receptionist looks astonished. "The train? Huh. Maybe I need to take more trips."

"You do that," she says in reply, winking, then turning to follow Stiles up the stairs to their room. It's small, with one bed, a tiny bathroom containing a toilet she would gladly die before touching, and a desk with an ancient computer sitting on it. Stiles sinks onto the bed with a troubled look on his face.

"Yeah, he totally thought you were my booty call," Lydia says, setting the key down in the desk and settling onto the edge of the dusty office chair, a tiny grin on her face. "Is everyone in - er - Beacon Hills as oblivious as you are?"

He meets her gaze and groans. "Oh no - I knew it. You lured me here to take advantage of me, didn't you?"

For a moment, she stares incredulously. Did he actually think -?

Seeing her confusion, he presses on, an adorably crooked grin tugging the corners of his mouth. "Just don't want you getting the wrong idea. Life-and-death situation . . . obviously I'm irresistibly attractive . . . and now we're sharing a hotel room . . ."

"Are you trying to talk me into something?" she said, grinning. It felt good to joke around with him - she and Jackson had always been proper and polite with each other, never teasing. The thought of Jackson is an immediate drain on her energy, and she leans back in the chair, his furious face flashing across her mind - somehow more terrifying and real than even the attack that had happened only a hour before.

"Well don't start getting any ideas," Stiles warns her. "I'm a one-woman man."

"Good for you," she mutters. "You must be the only one left in the world."

A thought strikes her and she shuffles her feet on the matted carpet to turn her chair towards the computer. It whirs to life asthmatically, and after a brief tussle with a login screen she finds herself online. Automatically, she checks her Facebook feed (104 unread messages, which she doesn't check) and then Jackson's.

She does this so reflexively that she isn't even aware of what she's doing until she's already staring at his profile picture. It's a new one, and whoever took it knew what they were doing - the lighting caresses his cheekbones and brings his blue eyes into startling life. His full lips are quirked in a tiny smile, like the Mona Lisa - looking at it, Lydia believes that he's laughing at her about a secret only he is privy to.

Seeing Jackson's face doesn't make her feel one whit better, but she keeps looking as if waiting for the poison he pumped into her for the last months to finally kill her.

"So who's this guy?" Stiles says so close to her ear that she jumps.

"Will you -!" she starts to snap, before breaking off and turning back to the screen. Jackson had always understood her issue with personal space - in fact, he had shared it. One of the many qualities they had shared. Loyalty not among them.

"We're back to the silent treatment, I see," Stiles says with a trace of annoyance coloring his tone. "So I'll just have to guess. Oh!" He barks out a laugh. "I've got it - you ran away from home to see if he'd follow."

Lydia laughs humorlessly. "No - he's not going to follow. He made that very clear."

He shoots straight up. "Oh-ho," he laughs, "I see! So this is why you're so doom and gloom all the time - this joker dumped you."

Lydia stares at the picture of Jackson, tears prickling the corners of her eyes. "Life dumped me," she mutters.

She can feel Stiles watching her, and after a long moment of silence she turns in irritation to meet his gaze. He's staring with his mouth half-open, a smile growing across his face. He leaps off the bed and leans over her shoulder to look at the computer, eyes scanning the screen.

"Ok," he says, turning to her. "This is what you're going to do. This is his newest profile picture, right?"

"Uh . . ." She waits for the punchline, but he continues to be serious. "Yeah. He just changed it today."

"Get in there and write the meanest comment you can think of on his picture. Make it so bad that when he wakes up tomorrow, he'll have to delete his entire _profile_. Screenshot it and post it to your profile, his mom's, the barista he gets his coffee from - just do it!"

She can't help the grin that creeps over her lips. "What? I - I can't."

"Yes you _can_." He lets out a laugh. "You fought off _vampires_ tonight, Lydia. Now you're going to let _this guy_ scare you?"

Lydia lets the word _vampires_ slip over her without more than a passing shudder. She's still not sure that she believes a word of that - but whatever the details of the encounter, the fact remains that they are both still alive, and because of her. Warmth spreads across her chest, and she sits up straighter, smiling in spite of herself, and turns towards the computer, fingers hovering over the keyboard.

"Go ahead," Stiles urges. "Lambast him. Critique his technique in bed, his morning breath, his vocabulary - anything! If it's true, great. If it's not true - even better!"

"I can't," she protests, biting her bottom lip to try and stop smiling. "It's so juvenile."

"Who cares?" he returns. "You will feel so much better - I promise. Just _do_ it."

At first she tries to be ladylike, as she's so often been told to be. But after the first two sentences, she really warms to her topic and her fingers begin to fly over the keyboard. First she gets sarcastic, then poetic. She even sneaks an Einstein quote into her conclusion. When she's done, she clicks _Post_ as fast as she can, without going back to reread what she wrote.

"Oh man," Stiles chuckles over her shoulder. "Remind me never to piss _you_ off."

"It's amazing," she mutters, suppressing a smile. "This stupid, childish thing - actually made me feel better." She spins in her chair, nearly knocking Stiles off his feet, and rises, feeling reborn somehow - like the goddess Venus being born from the sea. "I can't believe I was so hung up on him for so long. He stopped caring about me . . ." _After the attack,_ she almost says, and changes it lamely to, "ages ago."

"Yeah," Stiles says, rising to his feet and smiling down at her. "Forget about that douche. He's obviously not worth your time. You need to find someone who loves you - more than that, who _gets_ you . . . someone like Malia is for me."

She had forgotten that he had a mysterious someone waiting for him, and finds the idea strangely depressing. She sinks onto the bed and watches him as he paces around the room, hands moving with animation as he describes his perfect love - Lydia barely hears a word of it. Something about meeting in a mental hospital, which she personally finds to be not a very romantic idea. Apparently they've been long-distance on and off for the past six years or so, which she thinks makes Malia either the world's most patient or most unfaithful girlfriend.

Finally she interrupts his tirade, shifting tiredly on the bed. "Listen - I'd love to hear more about this. But I'm really tired and it's going to be a long bus ride tomorrow."

"Ah, yes - excellent idea. I'm beat." He turns towards the bed and takes a step towards her, then hesitates. For a moment he stares at her in the bed, and she stares back, her heart thumping wildly. Finally, Stiles clears his throat awkwardly.

"So - er - I'll sleep on the floor."

He nods sharply and grabs a pillow off the bed. She tosses him the thicker blanket before settling into the lumpy mattress. The pillow is lumpy too, and smells like sour milk. She shifts restlessly, tossing under the blanket. Finally, she turns back to face him and finds that his eyes are still open, staring up at the ceiling as he lays on his back.

"Stiles?" she says, lifting her head up on one hand and looking down at him. He returns her gaze, eyebrows lowered thoughtfully. "I think it's time you explained to me what - what those things that were trying to kill us earlier were."

A long silence follows her statement, and he chews on his lower lip, frowning. Then he sits up and rests his forearms on the edge of the bed, putting one hand on her arm as if to comfort her.

"I guess this never gets easier," he mutters, looking closely at her face. "Well," he continues, taking in a deep breath, "The short answer is that monsters are real."

A terrifying flash of red eyes hurtling towards her - she shudders. "Ok," she replies. Her worldview shifts slightly to accommodate this fact, and she finds that all kinds of things that she had previously been confounded by have suddenly begun to make sense.

He frowns slightly. "Uh - _ok_? Is - is that it? That's all you have to say." He takes his hand off her shoulder to gesticulate, and she immediately misses the warmth. "We're talking werewolves, werejaguars, werelions . . . anything _were_ you can think of, really. Ghosts. Wendigos. Berserkers. Kanima. Demons. I could go on." He had run out of breath, and stopped to watch her expectantly.

Well, if he had been waiting for her to freak out, he had come to the wrong girl. "How did you get involved with all this?" she wondered.

"Um . . ." He actually has to pause and think about this. "My best buddy Scott is a werewolf - he got bitten sophomore year of high school. We've been dealing with this stuff since then."

"And you?" She searches his amber-colored eyes. "What are you?"

"Me? I'm just ordinary." He shrugs, turns away to lean his back against the bed, head thrown back, eyes staring at the ceiling. "I mean, don't get me wrong - they need me. Boy, do they need me." He grins as if lost in memories. "I'm the plan guy, right? They couldn't find their rear ends in the dark without me. That's one of the reasons I'm headed back to California, actually. Something's going on and they are _so_ lost without me."

"I bet," she says. She's beginning to understand the feeling. She turns her face away, keeping her tone light. "Is Malia something?"

"Oh, sure." He smiles and his eyes light up. "She's a werecoyote - she's so strong she can lift a car. Like Superman. Her eyes turn the most beautiful blue when she's mad or whatever."

Lydia tries not to roll her eyes but barely succeeds. She's almost glad he's too lost in memories to see. "Well, that's enough education for one night, I think," she mutters. "Thank you for telling me."

He shrugs, moving away from the bed back to his blanket. "You handled it really, really well. Most people have like an . . . AHHHHH! AHHHH! period before they get used to it." He reaches up and turns off the light, and she hears him sigh as he settles into his pillow.

The darkness presses in around her. All she can think about is the past six months, the adjustment after the attack . . . an _ahhhhhh! ahhhh!_ period is a very accurate way to describe it. Panic attacks, mood swings, nightmares, hypervigilance, flashbacks . . . she shudders. _It's better now._ I'm _better._

 _So why did Jackson dump you then?_ A tiny, cold voice wonders inside her mind.

"Stiles," she whispers into the dark, clutching the pillow close against her chest.

"Mmm?" he replies, voice already sluggish with sleep.

"Were those things that attacked us tonight really vampires?" Her voice sounds very small.

He hesitates a breath before replying, and says very matter-of-factly, "Nothing but a couple of small-timers who didn't last ten seconds against you. Get some sleep."

After nearly an hour of tossing and turning on the mattress and listening indignantly to Stiles' cheerful snoring, Lydia sits up with a groan of frustration, combing her hands through her long hair. She should have known better than to think she'd be able to sleep in her slacks - at least the blazer is slung over the back of the office chair. She misses her nightly routine with her face and eye creams, she misses her _toothbrush_ , her silky pajamas, her cloud-soft bed and pillows. She misses her mom so much that it aches. She rubs her face tiredly - her headache keeps getting worse, a pounding beat in her head.

" _Help me,"_ someone whispers, almost in her ear.

She shoots straight up in bed, staring around, choking back a cry of terror. It's not Stiles - he's still a peaceful mound, sawing logs with gusto. Somehow the sound seems to have faded, as if heard from another room. The room that she's in now is deathly quiet, apart from the sound of ragged, bubbling breaths. Her mouth is full of the coppery taste of blood, her eyes roam around the darkness, terrified of what they'll see. There is a scream in her throat, choking her, but she _will not_ let it out this time. She is Lydia Martin, and she does have some dignity. That does not stop the fact that she knows - without knowing how - that something terrible is about to happen.

Lydia sits up in bed. "Stiles," she manages to gasp out. He wakes instantly, shifting around to gaze blearily at her. "Something - something's wrong."

"What?" he says, frowning. "What do you mean?"

Her breath comes in as a squeak. "We need to go!"

He fumbles with the light and it flashes on, blinding her. She squeezes her eyes shut tightly and buries her face in her blanket-wrapped knees, but not before she sees what she's afraid she would see.

Blood. Blood everywhere. Splashed across the walls, the carpet, even soaking the bed. She throws off the blanket with a cry and leaps off the bed, finding herself half wrapped around Stiles, fingers twisting in his t-shirt. She knows that she's making an idiot of herself but she doesn't care.

His arm gingerly wraps around her shoulder and he says softly, "What is it? What's the matter? Did you have a nightmare?"

Lydia shakes her head vehemently. "Not a nightmare." She knows all-too-well what those are - the paralysis, the fear, the terrible dream logic that makes so much sense until you wake up. _This_ \- this is different. She can still see it, and she hopes it will never make sense.

A woman's body, sprawled over the carpet, ripped half to shreds, her eyes staring directly at Lydia. Her lips are moving, but the only sound that issues from them is rasping gurgles, the desperate breaths of the doomed.

"What is it?" She can see from Stiles' face that he can't see it.

 _Now he'll think I'm crazy, like Jackson did,_ she thinks.

"Someone died . . . right _there_ by that window," she whispers, tears rising in her eyes. There is nothing there - she knows that, as well as she knows that two and two make four. But she can _see_ it, the blood splattered across the panelled wood, those terrible last gurgling breaths. The gashes in face, chest, side . . .

A terrifying certainty strikes her.

 _HE killed her._

She turns away sharply, sucking a breath in, as if struck by a blow. Stiles is there, warm and solid and safe, and she presses her face against him, breathing in deeply to seek calm. She can feel his hands hovering uncertainly, and the questions he isn't asking are probably choking him, but she doesn't care.

"There's someone I know in California that you should talk to," he says finally, his voice a rumble against her face.

She stiffens. If the word _Malia_ comes out of his mouth one more time -

"His name is Deaton."

She relaxes.

"I think he might be able to help you." He puts his hands on her shoulders and steps back a pace, just enough to look at her face. "Come on, I think we should get out of here."

Lydia bites her lip and nods, tears coming to her eyes that have nothing to do with her terror. He grabs her blazer and purse and holds out a hand for her, which she takes gratefully. His hand is so much bigger than hers that it engulfs hers completely.

"We can sleep on the bus," he says with a smile.


	4. Slowly, Slowly We Fall

**Kira**

Nearly an hour after Kira left the kitchen, she hears the slow, deliberate tread of several pair of feet coming up the stairs, past her room, carrying something heavy. Once the feet have descended and she hears the back door closing, she peeks her head out of the bedroom door and watches Scott climb slowly towards her, his head bowed with exhaustion. His hands have been scrubbed, but there is still blood on his shirt and pants where it soaked through his apron. He glances up and sees her, and a slow smile spread across his face.

"Sorry, didn't mean to keep you up," he says quietly.

"Did it go ok?" she asks. For some reason, the answer to this question is very important to her.

He nods, smile growing broader. "I think he'll be ok - thanks to you." He hesitates. "Do you want to see him?"

Kira bites her lip. "Can I? I don't want to disturb him . . ."

Scott shakes his head. "You won't. Come on up - I'll show you around the recovery room."

She follows him upstairs, to an attic room that she hadn't seen on her tour. It's different from the rest of the house - not as clean or as cozy. She glances around with dismay, seeing the tiny cot pushed up against one wall, the sterile piles of cages, boxes of old magazines and clothes, cobwebs in every corner . . .

" This is where you're going to sleep?" she whispers.

"It's ok - honestly. I sleep in here all the time. Maybe I should make it more permanent anyway. Look, our patient is over here."

The cage he leads her to is solid - bars of reinforced steel and iron, but somehow still comfortable, lined with blankets and pillows. Inside, the black wolf is lying in a stiff, unnatural position on his side, nose twitching as he sleeps. His entire middle is swathed with white bandages, and one long fang is bared, but he still contrives to look peaceful and tired.

Kira's vision blurs with tears as she sinks to her knees and looks at him. "I can't believe this is the same wolf," she murmurs. "He looks so much stronger already."

Scott chuckles as he sinks to his haunches next to the cage. "Wolves heal fast," he says. "I'll stay up with him tonight, just in case." He glances over at her, cocking his head thoughtfully. "You can touch him, if you want. Talk to him - it will help to calm him, even in his sleep."

A proverb about sleeping wolves comes into Kira's mind, but she ignores her natural caution for long enough to reach through the bars. She lays a hand gently on the rough fur, taking care to avoid the bandages all over his ribs. Under the fur, he is warm and solidly-muscled, and his heart is beating in a slow, steady rhythm.

"Did you give him something to help him sleep?" she asks, glancing over at Scott, who nods.

"He'll need a few days to recover enough to - uh, to go back to the woods."

She's surprised by the stumble in his words, and looks over to see his expression as he looks down at the slumbering animal. "You really love animals, don't you?" she says, touched by his tender gaze. "No wonder you became a vet."

Reaching down, Scott smooths down the fur on the wolf's head. "He's very brave," he says quietly. "I actually started working at a vet clinic when I was still in high school, and it's pretty much the only thing I've wanted to do ever since. I was lucky - not everybody makes it through high school, college, and a residency all the way on the other side of the country still wanting to do the thing they wanted to do in high school."

She chuckles, ducking her head. "Tell me about it. If you had asked teenage Kira what she wanted to do I think the answer would have been - uhhhhhhhhhhhhh . . ."

He laughs in response. "Some days I think that business management would have been a lot easier," he says. "It's not easy to open a clinic in a town as small as Beacon Hills. I'll breathe easier when we make it through our first year."

Kira isn't quite sure what prompts her to blurt out, "I can stay up with him." He looks up, ready to object, and she stops him. "You're exhausted, and you have a job that requires you to be up early. I can basically work whenever I want, as long as I get my projects get done in time. Let me stay up with him - I promise I'll shout if he so much as twitches." She holds his gaze pleadingly, hoping he won't force her to say It'll be so much better than lying awake alone in the dark, with nothing but my thoughts for company.

In the dark, her thoughts scared her more than any wolf could.

"Well," Scott relents, "I'll be right over here if you need me. Yell if anything changes, ok?"

He disappears downstairs and comes back up in button-up pajamas, then slides gratefully onto the cot and curls up under the blanket.

"Remember - anything ," he says, words already blurry with sleep. "Or even if you get tired."

"Ok," she replies. Her hand is still inside the cage, resting on the wolf's shoulder, but she feels no desire to remove it. It is still difficult to reconcile her memory of the enraged animal with blood-and-foam specked jaws snapping at her on the kitchen table with this peaceful animal that looks a lot like a husky she had known as a child. Without really thinking about it, she softly begins to sing to him as if he were a frightened child. It's an old song that her mother used to sing to her when she was a kid. It's in Japanese, so she has to fudge a few of the words, but the tune comes to her as easily as if her mother is there, singing along.

The wolf whines, so softly it's almost inaudible, and his fur twitches under her hand. She could swear it's as if he's trying to sing along with her, and encouraged, she moves on to a Korean song she learned from her father.

She swears that she can feel eyes watching her, but when she turns to look at Scott he is asleep, eyes peacefully closed, corners of his mouth turned up in a tiny smile.

Kira wakes up late the next morning to sunlight streaming through the windows, and a silent, empty house. The wolf is gone from upstairs, along with all signs of the impromptu surgery in the kitchen. There is a note on the kitchen table that contains Scott's cell number and a brief message:

Breakfast in the fridge. Will be at work all day, home for lunch at noon. Call or text if need anything.

For a while she sits at the table, staring at the note and trying to remember how she got into her bed the night before. She has a scattered recollection of clinging to someone as gentle arms wrapped around her, and a soft good-night in her ear, but that seems completely unlikely - Scott has never so much as laid a finger on her. That memory is more likely dredged up from her childhood memories of her father, who she misses for a brief, aching moment.

Deliberately, she pushes those feelings aside.

She is more determined than ever to appear normal. The events of the previous night reminded her of two things: one, that he is a regular human being with a job and friends, and two, that he is a really nice person that she is sure she is scaring with her random crying and silence.

So for the first time in about a week, she spends the morning taking care of herself, in a quiet, deliberate way - she eats the omelette that she finds in the fridge slowly, chewing each bite ten times in the Mrs. Yakimura-approved way; she takes a long, hot shower, scrubbing every inch of herself to near-rawness; she brushes and flosses her teeth, taking time to ensure that each one feels clean before she considers the task done.

Next she walks all around the house, looking for things to tidy. For a bachelor pad, it's surprisingly clean - she supposes that the mysterious mother is responsible for that. The only things she's able to find are a messy junk drawer and a dead lightbulb in the upstairs closet. She spends an hour sorting through the junk before giving it up as a bad job, and locates a new bulb in the pantry. Scott keeps a stepstool in the mudroom, so she lugs it upstairs and sets it up under the light fixture. It's still high enough that she has to stretch on tiptoe, teetering on bare feet, and after a few moments of frustration she takes the stepstool back downstairs and brings a chair from the kitchen instead.

By this point she is seething with annoyance, disproportionately so - she knows that it's not just the bulb and her own lack of height that is bothering her. But she vents her frustrations on those things anyway, hissing away under her breath. "Get over here you stupid piece of crap - stretch Yakimura, stretch -"

The closet is briefly illuminated by a bright light, and Kira frowns - apparently the bulb wasn't as dead as she'd assumed. After a moment of flipping the lightswitch up and down, she decides that it was nothing more than a final flicker of life, or perhaps she jostled it into connecting with the power.

She reaches up again, concentrating all her attention on the filament inside the bulb, and to her astonishment it comes to life once more. The closer her fingers come, the brighter it glows, until it's so bright she has to look away. Her reaching fingers brush its smooth surface and come to a halt - the bulb flashed under her fingers and then burst, glass flying in every direction. Kira ducked with a cry, shielding her face, then slowly rose and stared upward. The filament is blackened and shattered, and the glass is nothing but jagged shards clinging to the metal base.

Eventually she just leaves the bulb alone, vacuums the closet, and takes the chair downstairs.

When Scott comes in through the back door two minutes before noon, she's waiting next to a plate of grilled cheese sandwiches, hands twisting together self-consciously. He stopped, staring, and she could feel herself turning red.

"I - uh - made you some lunch," she says. "I didn't know what you like -"

He grins. "Grilled cheese is delicious. Thank you - you really didn't have to."

"No, I wanted to." She takes the food to the table and watches anxiously while he sits down, takes a sandwich, and begins chowing down. He eats two sandwiches before she's able to say the thing she rehearsed while she was cooking. "Uh, sorry for being rude and just walking off last night . . ." she muttered. Scott's eyes widened and he lowered the food he had at his mouth.

"No, don't feel bad! I totally get it. You didn't have to stay, I mean, that whole situation was probably new and weird for you." There was an awkward pause. "Um, thank you so much for helping me. I hope that didn't gross you out too much?"

She shrugged, putting her feet up on the chair and hugging her knees. "It was weird, but I'm glad I could help. I know I've been really in my shell these past few days, thinking about my parents, and I'm sorry." He was about to reassure her again, but she stopped him. "No, let me say this. You were right; I'm hurting, but that shouldn't have made me hesitate to help someone else . . . even if it was a wolf. I was selfish, and I don't want that to happen again.

"My mom told me to come to you. I don't know why- you don't even know why-but I'm going to make the best of this. I don't want to be a burden on you, okay? So, I'll help around the house. I do my work from home, so while you're gone at the clinic I can get stuff done around here."

"You don't have to-"

"But I want to," Kira insisted, meeting his eyes as firmly as she could. "I need to figure out what's going on, Scott, but I want to help you out as much as possible too."

"What do you mean, what's going on?" he asked slowly, taking a bite and chewing, looking down at his plate.

"You - you haven't noticed?" she says, surprised. A small, cold voice inside her wonders why he's avoiding her gaze. How do you know that you can even trust him ? "I've only been in this town for a few weeks but I've seen and heard so many strange things . . ."

She looked up just in time to catch the flicker of concern that passed over his features before he could smooth it away.

Great, now he thinks I'm a lunatic.

He chews in silence, eyes trailing across the room as if she's hard to look at. Something about that silence bothers her - it's as if he's waiting breathlessly while a coin flips through the air, and it's a matter of life or death which side comes up.

"I know I sound totally paranoid," she mutters. "Mulder-level freakout."

Scott shakes his head slowly. "I understand what you're going through," he says. "You can tell me anything, no matter how crazy you think it sounds."

You understand what I'm going through? Your mom comes by and folds your underwear! Mine disappeared after a cryptic phone call, leaving me a sword! She swallows this uncharitable sentiment and tries to think of something more politic to say. "It's hard for me to trust anyone these days," she admits, staring down at her hands clamped on her knees. "There's even something inside me that's worried about you - even though I know that's crazy. I never thought I'd turn out to be such a coward."

"You're brave enough to hold down an injured wolf," he says with a grin. "That's brave enough, if you ask me - but then again, what does a veterinarian know about courage? I've never had to face the kinds of things that you have - I think the worst thing that's ever happened to me was when I broke my arm at thirteen - so honestly in my opinion you're really astoundingly brave."

Kira looks at him, taking in the neatly-parted hair, the thick-rimmed glasses, and the crooked smile. "You're lucky, Scott," she murmurs, "to have never felt that kind of fear. It's blinding - eventually it's all that you can see."

She can't meet his gaze after this, and heads over to the sink where she scrubs the pan with single-minded fervor, well past the point where it is clean. He makes no attempt at conversation, but polishes off his sandwiches and thanks her, rinsing off the plate and putting it in the dishwasher before leaving with a smile and a quick wave.

Once she hears the front door slam and watches through the window as he vanishes around the corner of the cul-de-sac, she heads up to the bedroom and closes the door after her, feeling as if there are still eyes watching her. She fumbles under the bed, fingers gripping at the textured grip of the sword her mother left for her.

The afternoon light shines in through the window as she sits by the bed, the katana lying in the floor next to her. She's afraid to look at it; afraid to touch it. The thing that frightens her most is the joy and longing that rises unbidden in her chest when she looks at it, as if she's had a piece missing all her life and never knew it until now.

She is afraid of how brave the sword makes her feel.

Mom left it for me, she reminds herself. She must have had a reason.

This idea gives her confidence, and she reaches for the hilt. Her fingers close over the grip, and she waits for as moment, breath halted in her lungs. Nothing happened - no bloodthirsty visions, no sudden desire for violence - and she let out a sigh of relief.

Kira spends the next hour searching YouTube for katana-fighting lessons, a style which she learns is called kenjutsu , and it's startling how natural the movements feel. As a shy bookworm who designs marketing materials for a living, Kira knows that she should be slow and awkward - but the sword just feels right in her hands, and she flows from stance to stance as naturally as if she's done it her entire life.

The sun is low in the afternoon sky when she comes to a halt, the still-sheathed sword steady in her hands. She's tired, out of breath, and hungry - but she feels alive in a way that is totally foreign to her.

She runs down to the kitchen, scarfing down an entire sleeve of Saltines and two glasses of water, glancing out the back door where the dark line of trees is visible through the glass. She swallows her mouthful, mouth suddenly dry. Somewhere in those woods is the thing that killed her parents - she is sure of it. Something that stole away her father without a trace and spilled her mother's blood onto the ground.

Her hand curls around the handle of the sword.

It's time to face her fears.

 **Scott**

Scott loves mornings now. He loves rising from his cot in the recovery room and going down into the kitchen to see Kira flipping pancakes, her hair still wet from her shower. He loves eating across the table from her, and smelling her scent all over his house, and seeing her shy smile when he does something kind or thoughtful for her.

It's been a long time since he had spent so much time with someone who didn't see him as the True Alpha, a figure to either worship or fear.

Three weeks passed, and somehow it's already the night of the full moon. Deaton had been calling at least twice a day with new ideas for how to track down the Shadow, and the other members of the pack blew up Scott's phone with texts, some worried, some encouraging, others downright unhelpful.

 **I gotta say, he's more friendly as a wolf than he is a human,** Isaac texted to Scott. Derek had almost healed, although he still hadn't morphed back into his human form. Isaac had taken him back to the downtown loft where he lived, and kept pestering Scott with calls and texts with Derek updates, most of them selfies with his arms around the enormous wolf's neck. **Can't we keep him this way?**

Scott smiled, looking down at a video that Isaac had sent him, showing the black wolf gamboling about the loft chasing a stick. He leaned back against the wall of cages in the clinic and sighed.

 **Wolf Derek doesn't seem to carry the same burdens that he does as a human,** Scott replied. Sometimes he secretly wished that he could drop some of his own burdens, the burdens of leadership and of being the alpha. But it seemed too impossible.

Melissa texted often as well, concerned over both her grown-up pup and the three new ones she had acquired. **I think you need to talk to him** **,** she said of Liam, who had been moping around like a puppy with a thorn in his paw since the disastrous incident last hunt. **It's been forever since your last visit. Noah and I miss you.**

He frowned at this; it wasn't as if he'd been purposely avoiding visiting. **Sorry. Just got a lot on my plate right now.**

 **How's the fox-girl? What was her name? Kida?**

 **Kira** **.** He smiles at the sight of her name, then glances around the clinic at where Erica is glaring over the desk at him. She gestures to the waiting room full of patients, and he grimaces apologetically in reply. **She's doing better. I think keeping busy is what she needed.**

 **Let me know if you ever want your old cleaning lady to drop by, show her how it's done.**

 **I will. Love you.** He sends that along with a heart emoji, then shoves his phone back into his pocket and returns to work.

When he gets home for the day around 2 PM, he can tell something is wrong before he even steps into the house.

For one thing, the chemo-signals seeping through the front door are all wrong - adrenaline and dopamine, a potent mix that sets Scott's heart to racing. Her footsteps are hurried as she paces from one end of the kitchen to the other. He opens the door slowly, peeks in gently, but she still startles and nearly knocks a pot of boiling water off the stove.

"Oh - I'm sorry," he says, hurrying over to right the pot and also Kira. She backs away from his hands and he pretends not to notice that her eyes were overly-bright and her heart was thumping much faster than usual. He sank down into his seat at the table, watching her out of the corner of his eye. "Spaghetti?" he ventures.

She stares at him for a moment, then nods spasmodically. "Oh - right. Yes. Don't you like spaghetti?"

Scott tries for a smile. "Love it. That's the first thing my mom taught me how to cook."

The pasta is still chewy and the sauce is burned, but Scott smothers it in parmesan and downs two plates-full. He glances across the table at Kira, who is idly spinning her fork in her plate while staring intensely at the tabletop. From the looks of things, she hasn't eaten a single bite.

"Not hungry?"

She drops her fork, jumps at the sharp noise it makes, and glances up at him as if surprised to see him there. "What? Oh . . . no. I, uh, had a big breakfast." Her gaze focuses on his face as he speaks, and there is a hint of desperation around her tightening eyes. "I was looking at some of the news reports about the attacks that have happened. Did you know that - that every attack has happened on or just after the night of the full moon?"

Scott blinks. "Uh - I think the police made that connection. They thought it was some kind of ritualistic thing for a while."

"But really, they don't know anything. No leads, nothing. I want to go out in the woods to look for it. I know that the killer will be out there tonight. Whatever that thing is, it took both my parents - I can't just sit around waiting for the police."

"Took?" he repeated.

"Killed, whatever." She shook her head, her long dark hair fluttering around her face. "I can't believe that it's just some animal - even the smartest bear or cougar would leave some trace. It's got to be a person, or at least someone that used to be a human."

He hesitated. She was getting dangerously close to the truth there.

"You believe me, don't you, Scott?" she asked, leaning forward in an innocent, hopeful way. The way of a woman who wanted to believe that there still was hope. She wanted to believe that maybe she wasn't crazy.

The truth trembled on his tongue, but as he looked into her sorrowful brown eyes, he knew that he could not let her follow this obsession until it got her killed.

"Kira," he said quietly, "This is a job for the police. It's too dangerous for us to get involved."

She leaned back abruptly with a frustrated gasp, and he saw in her eyes as she turned away - she was disgusted. She thought he was a coward.

The washing-up is painfully silent, and she flees as soon as the last pot has been dried. He watches her go, sympathy and concern warring within his chest. Finally he let his chin drop to his chest and let out a long sigh. "Derek is gonna kill me," he muttered. Even though the pack would soon be convening before their hunt, he spent the next half-hour preparing an extra bag. Then he went up to the bedroom that used to be his and knocked.

It is almost a minute before she answers, not quite meeting his eyes with her own red-rimmed gaze.

"I'm going to be out all night - I've got an emergency delivery at the clinic," he says. She nods, clearing her throat and preparing to close the door.

"Wait," he says. "There's something I need to show you."

She trails after him as he goes out through the back door and across the backyard to the shed. He opens the door and gestures her in. Inside, a bare bulb shines on a battered, powder-blue Jeep. rusting in a few spots - but the tires are sound and the engine still propels it forward.

Kira stares at the Jeep and then at Scott, a confused line between her eyebrows. "What's this?" she asks.

Scott walks up to the Jeep and kicks the front tire. "Its name is Roscoe. It belonged to an old friend of mine - I don't use it very often. I think he'd like you to use it."

Her mouth is curved into a small, pleased smile, and she walks around the Jeep, testing the doors and running her fingers over the paint.

"Look on the front seat," Scott tells her.

She does, and pulls out an ancient green duffle bag. Inside the bag is a can of mace, an old police scanner that Scott dug up from the back of the storage room, a pair of old hiking boots, a map of the forest, an aluminum baseball bat, and a set of keys with a green bottle opener on it. She looks up from the bag with even more confusion, but her eyes are sparkling.

"Just promise me you won't go further than the jogging trail," he says, backing away towards the door.

"Thank you, Scott," she said, her voice loud and delighted for the first time he can remember.

He turns away towards the house, hands stuffed deep in his pockets, and grins. "Don't mention it," he says softly.

As he shuts the back door behind him again, a sudden shock of anxiety made him squirm. But if it made her happy, what harm could it do? Stiles had come along on much more dangerous hunts than this. And he and the rest of the pack would be out there to make sure nothing happened to her. Besides, she'll be on the other side of the jogging trail - miles away from there they will be hunting the Shadow.

He takes his usual bus back to the clinic and walks around to the back of the building, where a small shed stands locked with a padlock. He opens it up and gazes at the lone occupant - a Yamaha SRC-series with custom green detail work, the first purchase he had made for himself after living a Spartan existence in med school.

The motorcycle roars to life under him and he shoots onto the road, heading towards the east end of town, where the Beacon Hills Preserve begins. It's hundreds of miles of wilderness out there, crisscrossed by ravines and caves and rearing hills, with small, twisted oak trees and thorny underbrush.

Somewhere out in that maze, a deadly predator is lurking. And they have to find him.

Scott parks his motorcycle next to Chris Argent's SUV, his headlight illuminating the **Beacon Hills Preserve** sign that he's seen so many times in his life. He can smell the others - they're all here, waiting a few hundred yards into the woods. He tests his senses, allowing his eyes to flare alpha red, bringing the dark woods into sharp focus. There's Allison's delicate vanilla-y perfume, and the sharp sting of Chris's cologne. Boyd and Erica smell musky, and Derek's scent is even stronger now that he's been a wolf for an entire month.

In spite of this torrent of information, Scott finds his mind drifting back towards the house he left, a scent that he already misses. He can't help but worry about her, his fingers digging into the handlebars of his motorcycle, picturing her wandering the woods alone with nothing against the monsters but a can of mace.

"Oh man, you've got it bad," Isaac observes, stepping forward from where he had been leaning on a tree on the other side of the clearing.

Scott sighs. "Is it that obvious?"

"You reek with it," Isaac wrinkles his nose. "Did you even notice me?"

Scott chooses to ignore this as they fall into step together, trudging through the underbrush towards the rest of the pack. "You know what she told me?" he let out a soft sigh. "She said she didn't think she would ever be able to trust anyone again - after what happened. And - I want to get close to her. I fall for her more every day. But - how can I, when I'm lying to her all the time? And when I know what happened to her parents, most of it at least, and am letting her blunder around in the dark?"

"So tell her." Isaac shrugs. He glances over at Scott, dark eyes curious.

Scott squints at him. "I thought you were totally against getting her involved in this."

Isaac shrugs again. "Maybe not everything . But you know that either way, she'll find out. We'd all be better off if she found out from you, and not the Shadow."

"I agree," Chris Argent chimes in, joining them from the shadows, a shotgun dangling at his side. "If she can learn to use her powers, she could be a pretty valuable asset."

Scott grimaces. "There isn't enough time - and sending in someone half-trained is too dangerous. Look what happened with Liam, Hayden, and Mason."

Another dark shape emerges out of the darkness to join them. "If she's anything like her mother, she'll soon be handing all of us our butts on a platter," Allison snorts, adjusting her knit hat over her dark hair and resting her crossbow on her shoulder. "Trust me on that. From what I've heard, kitsune learn fast - crazy fast."

"If you ask me, it's a bad idea." Erica's tone is caustic - her eyes are glowing yellow and her teeth are out. They're all in the clearing now - surrounded by the gathering twilight, the outlines of the trees dim and hazy against the colorful sky. "Foxes and wolves don't get along - that's just biology." Boyd grins at her words, his nose up and sniffing.

"Are we going to stand around talking about this chick? Or are we going to hunt ?" he growls.

"Boyd's got a point," Chris says. "The kitsune can wait. We can't let this monster hurt anyone else."

Scott nods, glancing around the clearing. His pack is waiting for his word, and for a moment the old anxiety of leadership - of getting someone killed - pours like fire through his blood. He breathes deeply and lets it flow out of him. "Where's Derek?" he asks.

As if in reply, the enormous black wolf leaps over a log into the clearing. As soon as his paws touch down among the leaves, his eyes flash blue and he begins to shift - taller and taller, fur shrinking into pale skin, fingers and toes lengthening. In a moment, Derek unfolds himself from the ground, rising to his full height and grinning.

"Jeez, Derek," Allison complains, averting her eyes. "Did you bring pants?"

"I thought you couldn't shift back!" Isaac says. "You were acting like a big puppy all month."

Derek laughs. "I've been able to shift back for three weeks now, but you were enjoying yourself so much that I didn't have the heart to tell you. Scott," he says, shifting his gaze over to the Alpha, "The moon is about to rise. We need to hurry."

Scott nods, his gaze running over each member of the pack. "We all know what we need to do," he says. "The traps are already set - we just need to get him into one of them."

"So what's the bait this time?" Allison wonders, her fingers wandering lightly over the arsenal strapped to her torso.

Scott grins, his fangs stretching his lips. "We are," he growls, glancing over at Chris.

Chris steps forward, his eyes like chips of ice. "The most irresistible scent to a wolf is not that of prey or blood - it's that of another wolf or canine in their territory. So the two fastest members of the pack - Erica and Derek - will run around the perimeter, while the rest of us will cut across, following deer trails. Allison and I have already placed traps along those trails, so watch out."

"Running - hooray," Erica groans, but Scott can tell by the curve of her lips and her scent that she's pleased by the compliment. "How far out are we going?"

Scott grabs a map that Chris produces, tracing a fingertip across the paper. "We've already scoured this area and came up with nothing. We'll circle back as far as Devil's Peak, then come back along the cliff. Got it?" He looks around and smiles at the chorus of nods. "Allison, Chris, you've got your emitters set up back towards the populated area? Good. Keep him from circling back that way, but stay back so that your scent doesn't scare him off - or worse, attract him towards you."

Allison looks at Chris and they nod sharply. "Everyone, I don't need to tell you to be careful," Chris says, glancing around.

"Be careful," Allison murmurs to Isaac, kissing him deeply before turning away and heading back to the cars.

Erica lets out a low whine, and none of the other wolves has to be told what the matter is - they can all feel it. The moon is beginning to rise.

It's a perfect silver disc, flat and sharp against the dark violet sky, and it calls to them, to the madness always lurking in their veins, urging them to set the darkness loose, to unbind the careful control that they hold over themselves.

Erica and Boyd transform instantly, howling madly towards the sky, and Isaac's claws gouge into a tree trunk as he struggles not to fall over. Their eyes are so bright they light the clearing like flashlights. Derek runs among them, head thrown up towards the sky, blue eyes gleaming and teeth snapping together.

They gather around Scott, all eager eyes and musky scents, and he transforms slowly. Hair sprouts from his cheeks, his mouth fills with fangs, his eyes glow scarlet.

"Time to run," he snarls from between his teeth.

For a long time after that, the moon-madness takes them. Their alpha was not with them on their last hunt, and they run together just for the joy of it, leaping across ravines and dodging through stands of trees, howling at the moon that fills them with equal parts pleasure and pain.

Finally, Scott drags them to a halt and turns his red eyes towards them, and they fall back whining from his gaze. "Erica, Derek, it's time," he says. They take off without another sound, running in opposite directions, shadows slipping through shadows under a silver sky. Boyd yips up at the moon once more before running off as well, but something in the air makes Scott hesitate. He sees that Isaac has noticed as well.

"You smell that?" Isaac asks. Scott nods sharply.

"You and the others keep going - I'll keep an eye on her."

Isaac nods before continuing in the direction of the trail. Scott drops to all fours and charges off through the trees in the direction of the scent. It's not too close - it takes him twenty minutes to locate the source, but when he does, he stops in chagrin.

It's in an arroyo, a place where flood runoff has carved a gully out of the cliff. The Jeep is parked there, lights burning out into the darkness. It's unmistakable - Scott knows every scratch, every piece of duct tape on that vehicle.

How did she know to come this way? he thinks, astonished.

A loose stone rattles behind him and he jumps, cursing his own carelessness that she managed to sneak up on him so easily. He lands lightly on a rock outcropping nearby and watches as she scrambles down the rocky slope towards him. She's dressed in dark clothing and panting with exertion - and - is that a sword? A ninja sword? Scott curses inwardly - that's the third time that she's managed to surprise him tonight, and he is beginning to get very annoyed at himself.

She's already seen him. Running would be counterproductive at this point - it's better to keep her where he can see her, protect her if necessary. He stays on all fours as he climbs down the rocks, but rises to two feet once he's on solid ground.

"Don't come any closer - I'm armed," she cries, her hands trembling around the handle of the sword. "W-what - is that a costume?" She looks him over from head to toe with wide eyes.

"You're out far -" He stops himself before he can say farther than the jogging trail. That's something that Scott told her. "Farther than is safe. You should head back now."

"N-No!" she cries, grinding her teeth together and pointing the sword directly at his chest. "I'm here to find my parents. What did you do with them?"

"I'm not the one who took your parents." He winces away from the lie - remembering his claws tearing through Noshiko's skin, leaving bloody gashes. But that part had been her own idea, and it had taken the kitsune more than a week to convince Scott to do it in the first place. "My pack and I are hunting for the one that did."

"Pack?" Her voice quavers on the word. "How many of you are there?"

"I can't tell you that." He pauses. "I shouldn't even be talking to you. There's danger to me and everyone like me if anyone finds out about us."

She shudders, tears coming out in her eyes. "I won't tell anyone. Please. I just want to find the person who killed my parents. Do you know who it was?"

Scott shakes his head slowly. "They're fast, and they know how to disguise their trail. We've been hunting them for months now."

Her mouth is dangling open, the tip of her sword dropping unnoticed towards the ground. "What's your name?"

He considers. "Call me Rafe," he says finally.

"Uh - Kira." She remembers her sword suddenly and brings it up again, keeps talking, rapidly, as if to fill the silence. "First my father vanishes without a trace, and then my mother. And they've tried to tell me it was a bear? And they're not even the only ones - there have been unsolved disappearances in this area going back more than a decade, not to mention all of the weird incidents at the high school, the high turnover rate of sheriff's deputies, the really strange people who tend to move here . . . Last month there was a wolf in the woods - even though wolves haven't been seen in California for decades! There's something else going on here, I know it. I'm not going crazy . . . am I?"

She looks at him with dark, fearful eyes.

Scott takes in a deep breath. I guess it's time , he thinks. "You're right. The thing I'm hunting isn't really an animal, any more than I am."

"So . . ." She hesitates, and he can see that she both desires and fears his answer. "What are you?"

He bares his teeth gently, allows his eyes to flare a deeper red. "I'm a werewolf."

"Werewolf? W-werewolves are real?" Her eyes are wide and her hands are trembling so much that the tip of her sword is wavering from side to side.

"It's real. All of it. All of us ."

Her lips repeat the word silently. "Ok. Uh - ok. So . . . this thing that's killing people is, uh, one of you?"

Scott winces. "We don't know who he is. Or she. I've seen something similar to this, years ago when I was . . . new. One of us, driven mad by pain and anger, taking it out on those he considered guilty. It was quite the task, taking him down. You're better off - safer - if you stay out of this."

She nods, her eyes fixed on his face, but there's a faint line between her eyebrows. "I mean - obviously I know that. But being safe isn't the only worthwhile thing. I think somehow my parents . . . or at least my mom . . . knew more about this than they told me. She left me this," she continues, hefting the sword. "I'd never seen it before, but she left a note saying it was for me. And when I picked it up, it was like . . ." Her breath trails off, and she bites down hard against the emotion he can smell rising in her. "It was like I already knew how to use it. Like it was something I had forgotten, and . . . I just, I want to keep remembering."

It's a selfish impulse, he knows. Isaac was right - she'd be better off knowing. But he can't help but treasure the hopeful, trusting way she had looked at him when he was a human. It would kill him if she lost that - lost that in this desperate quest. "You want to learn how to fight?" he asks.

She looks at him, and nods hard, once. "Yes."

The moon-madness is still set like a whip at his back, and his annoyance only gives it a sharper edge. With a piercing howl he charges at her, knocking her on her back before she has time to gasp with fear, and her sword flies out of her hands to land in the dirt a yard away. He swings around, dust flying, and glares at her with his glowing red eyes.

"You should go home," he growls, low in his throat. "Somewhere where it's warm and safe. It's neither of those things in the woods. With us ."

He disappears into the trees and watches until she climbs back into the Jeep, shivering from head to toe, and then drives away into the darkness. As he lopes away through the trees he winces inside and wonders, Why on earth did I give her my dad's name?

A moment later another running shape joins him.

"So why didn't you just tell her who you are?" Isaac wondered.

Scott considered this for a long moment, trying to sort through the emotions churning in his guts.

"She looked at me differently," he said finally.

Isaac laughs at this, a feral sound that is more than half howl. "Of course she did. You're a werewolf - an alpha."

Scott shook his head. "I mean - she looked at Scott differently."

"You can explain that one to me later," Isaac replies. "The others are coming."

A moment later they skid to a halt, nearly crashing into Erica, Boyd, and Derek coming the other direction.

"What is it?" Scott demands, looking the three of them over. "Why are you back so early? Did someone get hurt?"

Derek sighs, glancing over at the other two. "No - no one's been hurt. But there's something you need to see.

Scott and Isaac race back through the woods, following the three betas until they reach the trail where the traps were placed. The nearest one is tucked underneath the spreading branches of a California Live Oak, a steel-jawed trap with wicked teeth. And it's been sprung, by a large stick placed inside. The stick is half-destroyed - little more than splinters the size of fingers.

"What the heck is going on?" Isaac growls, staring around. "Someone's playing a prank? Nobody comes out this far except for rangers and hikers."

"This was no hiker," Derek says, pointing one claw at the trunk of the tree. Scott looks with his wolf-sight and sees a spiral carved into the bark. "We checked at least a dozen other traps, and they're all the same," Derek continues. "I'd be willing to bet that every single trap that the Argents set has been compromised."

"What does it mean?" Erica asked, passing her fingers over the spiral, a low growl emerging from her throat.

Derek shakes his head, his arms folded over his chest. "It means revenge," he states softly. "It means there's a reason he's here, that he's coming after us."

Scott sighs heavily. "It's time to face the truth - this is no mad wolf we're chasing."


	5. When We Started Walking

**Lydia**

They spend what's left of the night on the silent bus, waiting for 6 AM to arrive so they can leaving Hastings, IA, behind - hopefully forever. Lydia curls up in her seat, watching Stiles through her eyelashes as he leans his head against the seat in front of him, his eyes drooping closed. His lips are moving, but she can't hear what he's saying.

"Are you praying?" she wonders softly.

"Yeah." He turns his head to look at her. "Praying that nothing else will happen tonight! Let's have a boring morning, huh?"

Lydia nods in agreement. "What you said earlier - about someone you knew I should talk to. Deacon?"

"Oh - right! Deaton." He turns towards her, hands clasped, grinning. "He's basically Obi-wan, although he hates it when I call him that."

"Star Wars?" She raises an eyebrow.

"Yeah - oh, I'm so glad you know what I'm talking about. _Way_ too many people that I know have never seen Star Wars, can you believe that?" He's doing the manic-gesturing, endearing-grin thing again, and she has to look away to hide a smile.

"There are people who haven't seen Star Wars?" she replies. "That's pretty amazing, if you think about it. So in what way is Deaton like Obi-wan? Not dead, I hope."

Stiles snorts. "Deaton will outlive us all," he says. "More Obi-wan like . . . wise. Do you get visions like that a lot?"

"Visions?" she repeats, disliking the word. "Is Deaton a psychiatrist? Because I've already been to see several, top of their profession."

"Ha!" He leans back against the window, legs stretched across the seats. "No, he's a veterinarian. My buddy Scott took over his practice a while ago, but he still comes in sometimes just for the fun of it."

They talk until the bus starts to fill with other travelers, and Stiles slides across the aisle to sit next to Lydia, and even though neither of them slept more than an hour that night they spend the entire bus ride talking, as well. The drive to Salt Lake is long and arduous, involving several bus changes, but Stiles keeps Lydia from getting too grumpy with his antics and Lydia stops Stiles from getting too manic with her gentle, but firm reproofs.

They have a four-hour stop in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Lydia drags Stiles out of the station literally by the wrist, ignoring his nonstop complaining.

"Clothes shopping?" he repeats. "I'm ok, really."

"You need some clothes that are not pajamas," she says. Although she secretly thinks he fills out the sweatpants very well. "And I _need_ pajamas. Some jeans and skirts. New shoes. Anything but this suit."

They get back to the bus wearing new clothes, each burdened by a new backpack, and a chagrined look on Stiles' face. "Those shoes cost _how_ much, again?" he asks at least twelve times, staring at her new pumps. She ignores him.

Eight hours later they exit the bus in Salt Lake City under a bright-blue sky with small ragged clouds scattered across it, the Rockies rearing up almost overhead, and the city traffic bustling all around them. They use the trolley to get to the train station, where Stiles wrestles with mountains of paperwork before the transit authorities will hand over his luggage, wallet, and cell phone.

He follows her around the city, dragging luggage, his phone practically glued to his face, returning the 10,000 worried messages he received in the last two days. "I'm _fine_ Mom," she hears him say with exasperation as they're standing in line at the car rental agency.. "Yes, it _did_ involve a girl - how did you know? No, Dad, it really _isn't_ like that . . ."

The car they end up getting is a little pedestrian for Lydia's tastes, but Stiles grins in satisfaction. "Rated #1 in reliability by Consumer Report," he tells her. She purses her lips, but gets in the driver's seat anyway. They leave Salt Lake behind and zoom across the desert, chasing mirages towards the horizon. Lydia tries not to gloat about the conspicuous lack of any worried messages from Malia. Stiles spends a while looking for one, but this makes him grin for some reason. "She's not the worrying type," he tells Lydia, like she cares, but she puts a good face on it.

"Sooo . . ." she says when he pauses for breath. "Malia. She sounds really nice. And you're going to go see her in California?"

Stiles shifts in the passenger's seat, and she catches his grin out of the corner of her eye. "It's more than that, even. Look at this." He takes something small and black out of his pocket. "Well, maybe don't look. But I brought a ring to give her."

"Oh." She knows that the word falls flat and winces internally, but he is far too excited to notice.

"Yeah, I'm going to propose! It's gonna have to be a long engagement - there's some complicated stuff with her family - but I don't want to wait anymore. We've been together _forever_ , and even though my dad's going to blow a gasket, I don't care. They'll come around eventually."

"Wait," she sputters, completely at sea now. "Your family doesn't like her? Do they even know about her?"

"No, they know about her. But they kinda think she's dead. Everyone does - she's under witness protection."

" _What?_ " Suddenly Lydia wishes she had been paying more careful attention while he had been talking about this girl. "I don't - _what?_ "

"Yeah." He rubs at his neck, looking away thoughtfully. "Her dad is kinda a bad dude. Like - a really bad dude. He's been trying to get his hands on Malia for years, and it got so bad that I got the Bureau to hide her."

Lydia takes a moment to digest this. "So . . . you know all this, and you still want to be with her? Marry her?" She shakes her head. "My parents are both rich and attractive, but even _that_ wasn't enough to keep them together."

He shrugs, watching her out of serious dark eyes. "When it's right, it's right, I guess."

An exit sign flashes by, and Lydia groans. "You hungry?" she says. "I'm going to pull over at the next stop - I'm exhausted."

Stiles yawns widely. "Starving and ready to sleep for a week. Should we see if Hotel _Descent_ has a counterpart in Winnemucka?"

She shoots a glare at him, but she can't help the smile tugging away at her lips.

They stop at a burger and beer joint, order basically everything on the menu, and by the time the waiter gets back with their drinks they are both asleep with their heads on the table.

The next day, they've made it across the border into California when the car breaks down. It gives up spectacularly, halfway up a mountain, a nearby sign informing them that it's 20 miles to Truckee and 45 miles to Lake Tahoe.

Lydia storms out of her seat and kicks a tire, glaring at the useless hunk of metal steaming by the side of the road. "Rated #1 in reliability, huh?" she shoots over her shoulder at Stiles. "Can you call Consumer Report to give us a lift?"

"I told you to check the fluids at the last gas station," he says, although his reasonableness only serves to infuriate her further.

"I'm calling AAA," she mutters, feeling in her pockets and letting out a groan of exasperation when she remembers that her iPhone is somewhere in Chicago - probably in a pawn shop by now. "Ok then give me _your_ phone," she says, rounding on Stiles.

He takes it out and wiggles it in her direction. "No signal. Should have gone with Verizon, huh?"

She slumps against the car, groaning loudly. "Ok, so we - what? Wait to flag down a car or something?"

"Not waiting," Stiles said, shouldering his backpack and taking off down the road.

"What do you think you're doing?" she called after him, glancing back at the car he's leaving behind. "Your suitcase is still -"

"Nothing I really need in there," he says, patting the backpack. "It's such a nice day anyway, and these trees are gorgeous. We can call AAA about the car later."

He keeps walking while she glares, hands on hips, and then dives into the trunk, feverishly packing as much as will fit into her own backpack, finishing off with a large hat to keep the sun off her pale skin. She has to run to catch up with him, and he grins at her as she falls into step next to him, glowering from under her hat.

"Told you we might end up walking," he says. "This is better anyway."

The day is beautiful, she has to admit, and at first she is charmed by his seemingly endless knowledge of trees and flowers, his boundless enthusiasm for every single aspect of life. The charm soon wears off, however, as soon as her heels start to wear through the skin on the back of her foot. A light drizzle begins to fall, and they are forced to trudge through the grass on the side of the highway to avoid cars rushing by.

A beat-up van pulls onto the the verge just ahead of them, and Stiles runs towards it with a smile. Lydia follows at a slower pace, crossing her arms and watching warily.

"Need a lift?" The speaker is a black kid, twenty at the oldest, and there are at least six other faces peering out the windows at them. "Got room in the back," he says, jerking his thumb in that direction. "We're headed back to Sacramento."

"Sure," Stiles replies with a grin. He looks back at Lydia and his smile slips. "One second." He pulls her a few steps away. "What's the matter?"

"No way." Lydia shakes her head. "I am _not_ hitchhiking."

He squints at her. "You'd prefer to hike? In those shoes?"

Trust him to kick a girl when she's down. She hadn't known that he'd noticed her limping as the pumps dug blisters into her skin. Lydia glares at him furiously, but he's certainly right that hiking is quickly becoming impossible. He fist-pumps as she pushes past him and climbs into the back of the van.

There are already four people back there, and the only available spots are in the far back, so Lydia gets squeezed in between Stiles and a gangly kid with tanned skin and light brown hair. The van roars back onto the highway, narrowly missing being flattened by an eighteen-wheeler whose driver leans on his horn as he skids past in the left lane. Lydia closes her eyes and swallows hard against the nausea. She pays little attention to what is being said until she hears Stiles say next to her, "I'm Stiles Stilinski, and this is Lydia . . . er . . ."

He jabs her with his elbow and she sighs, speaking without opening her eyes. "Lydia Martin."

"Wait, you're _the_ Lydia Martin?" Lydia opens her eyes in surprise. The girl who is speaking is cute in a pixie-like way, with fair skin and almost-white hair, with dark makeup around her eyes and a stud in her nose. "Whoa. Congratulate me guys, I've met my idol." She has turned in her seat next to the driver to lean halfway over the back, staring avidly at Lydia.

"So are we picking up Beyoncé next?" someone quips.

"Shut up, jerk," the girl says. "You're looking at, like, the next Stephen Hawkings. Did you really start at MIT as a junior straight out of high school? You've solved _two_ of the Millennium prizes, right?"

"One," Lydia mutters. "I proposed a solution to the Hodge conjecture for my graduate thesis. They're still trying to disprove it, but so far it still stands."

"Oh." The girl frowns. "Sorry, I thought I heard two."

Lydia looks away, trying to signal that the conversation is over. Everyone is staring at her, but after a moment they start up a new topic, and quickly the talking and laughing starts up again as if it were never interrupted. Lydia's neck is tingling, so she looks over, and sure enough, Stiles is watching her.

"Wow, so you're like - famous," he says, gazing at her with such admiration that she blushes and looks away.

"Just among the college math-nerd set," she replies.

"Beautiful _and_ a genius," he teases, elbowing her gently in the ribs. "Tell me about what you've done that's made you so sought-after. What are these . . . uh . . . Millennial prize things?"

"Millenium prizes. Just nerdy problems no one can figure out. There's one - the Riemann hypothesis - that I've been working on since I was in high school. When my solution to the Hodge conjecture got famous enough, the University of Chicago brought me onto their staff to work on it full-time."

"Wow, that's amazing," he says, his eyes alight. "So you're like Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind?"

"Yeah, and I think I'm at the part where he starts to go crazy." She sighs and leaned back in her seat, letting her head fall backwards onto the place where the headrest isn't. "Four years - and nothing. Eventually my funding is going to fall through if I can't show any results."

"Hey." His fingers curls over hers. "You'll figure it out."

She raises her head to look at him, and as she looks into his eyes, the world fades away for a moment - the laughing college students, the rumble of the engine, the tinny music coming from the radio . . . even the voices are silent.

The college students drop them off just south of Sacramento that evening, where they call AAA and arrange for the abandoned car to be picked up. They book a new rental car in the morning, and then find the closest motel to collapse.

That night, as Lydia curls up in her motel-room bed listening to Stiles' whistling snore from only a few feet away, she smiles deep inside herself as she falls asleep. This is the first time she can remember feeling happy in months.

Too bad it doesn't last.

 _Running, running. Her heel catches on a storm drain and she falls heavily to her hands and knees, but she scrambles upright and limps on, blood pounding in her ears and her breath coming and going so fast it nearly strangles her._

 _She looks back and there they are again - the red eyes, the claws sparking as they skitter over the concrete. She's not fast enough, never fast enough._

 _The dark thing gathers itself and leaps, high into the air, so high that she can see it passing between her and the full moon. It is coming and she can see its_ teeth -

Lydia sits up in bed and _screams._

He is on his feet almost before he is fully awake, ripping off the blankets and tangling himself in the sheets, tumbling completely to the floor with a muffled thump. The next second he's next to her, arms folding around her, comforting words whispered against her hair. She is shuddering against him, but her sobs of panic have begun to calm, and her fingers dig into his skin as she clings to him. Through a gap in the curtains she can see the full moon shining silver.

"What is it?" he asks. "A nightmare?"

"No," she sobs. "A memory."

There is surprise in his voice. "What, did you serve in 'Nam?"

She shakes her head, and to her surprise the story just pours out of her. "Eight months ago I was . . . attacked. By the serial killer, the Shadow."

He holds her at arm's length, amazement widening his eyes. "You - you were one of the victims of the Shadow? You were the one he left alive in Chicago . . . the only one they've found alive."

She nodded, squeezing her eyes shut against the tears. "Sometimes I wish he hadn't."

"Hey." he protests, eyebrows lowering, pulling her back in for a hug. "Never say that, ok? What about all the people who would miss you if you weren't here? What about _me_ , huh? Imagine what a boring trip I would have had without you."

She laughs at this - she can't help it. Even the Shadow seems like a distant dream, a story she heard somewhere, when he's holding her like this.

Unfortunately, he releases her half a second later, an expression on his face that she does not understand. He stares at her as if she is a puzzle he is trying to solve, and she doesn't like it. "So, wait. You were attacked by the Shadow. As in . . . he bit you?" There is none of the usual revulsion or confusion on his face, only a quiet kind of amazement half-hidden by his usual spastic excitement.

In reply, she lifts the hem of her shirt to reveal the left side of her torso. She remembers how long it was before she felt comfortable showing the scars to Jackson, and how much longer again it had been before he could look at them without disgust.

Her entire body trembles as Stiles reaches towards her side, fingers spread, and she can't decide if she wants to stop him in his tracks or beg him to touch her, but all he does is hover his fingers over the marks, eyebrows drawn down over his dark eyes, and murmurs, "Looks kinda like a hand, doesn't it?"

She can just about feel the warmth from his hand and she pulls her shirt back down hastily, murmuring, "That's one of the strange things about it - yes. I mean, the official explanation was that it was a serial killer, but every victim whose body was found showed signs of being mauled by some large animal."

Stiles jumps off the bed and begins pacing, and she watches him with a confusing mixture of annoyance and affection. She could count on one hand - probably one _finger_ \- the number of men who would have gotten out of a situation like that without at least _trying_ to kiss her. She can't decide whether she is more angry at him for being a distractible doofus, or herself for getting her hopes up.

 _He's going to propose to Malia, the non-worrier who is probably free-climbing a redwood right now,_ she reminds herself.

Stiles collapses back onto his bed, staring up at the ceiling while she stares at him. "He _bit_ you," he murmurs. "And now you . . . what? Have visions? I've never heard of that, but Deaton probably has."

"What are you talking about?" she asks, allowing some of her frustration to color her tone. He sits up, eyes looking at her but not really seeing her.

"I think you might be - _something_."

She whispers, "What does that mean?"

 **Stiles**

They are both exhausted when they finally pull up to the Stilinski-McCall house in Beacon Hills and are instantly swarmed by a chattering crowd of friends and family. Stiles is half-yanked from the passenger seat of the car and subjected to a thorough going-over by at least half-a-dozen people to make sure he isn't lying about being all right. He glances over his shoulder to see that Lydia is still sitting in the car, her hands on the wheel, watching him leave with a small smile.

"Wait - hold on a moment," he tells his well-wishers, rescuing himself from their clutches and hurrying back to the car. "Come on in," he says to Lydia, leaning down to poke his head in the window.

"Oh, no," she replies, fumbling with the stereo to avoid his eyes. "I don't want to intrude. Besides, I should probably -"

" _No_ ," he says firmly. "You have to at least stay the night. I absolutely insist. My whole family has been dying to meet you."

This makes her look, if anything, even more apprehensive, so he stalks around to her door and opens it for her. She looks ready to kick up a fuss, but finally steps out of the car with nothing more than a long sigh.

"There had _better_ be a spa somewhere in there," she mutters up at him as he he takes her hand and drags her towards the house. Melissa, Stiles' stepmother, runs towards them and embraces Lydia fiercely. Lydia looks at Stiles with wide eyes, but returns the hug tentatively.

"Oh, my gosh," Melissa says, wiping away tears as she steps back from Lydia after a long moment. "I don't even know how to thank you enough for bringing him back safely."

Stiles quickly introduces Lydia to the crowd - Melissa, Liam, Mason, and Hayden.

"Where's Dad?" Stiles wonders when he's run out of people to introduce.

"Oh, he's out back getting the coals ready for the barbecue - he'd murder me if I didn't take you to see him right away." Melissa clasps her hands and looks first at Lydia, then at Stiles, and takes both of their hands to lead them through the house into the backyard.

It's late afternoon now, and the yard is full of smoke and the scent of burning coals. Bending over the grill is Stiles' dad, casual in a plaid shirt and jeans, and he turns to greet them with a smile.

"So you finally made it back," he says gruffly, putting his hands on his son's shoulders, his mouth a downward-curving slash. Stiles steps forward to hug his dad tightly, and he can feel how the older man is shaking when he lets go. He turns away quickly, but not before he sees the tears in his dad's eyes. "This must be the girl you didn't tell me much about," Noah says, turning to Lydia.

"Uh, Lydia Martin - this is my dad. Noah Stilinski," Stiles said, sniffling and wiping his own eyes.

Noah steps towards Lydia and embraces her tightly. "Thank you so much for looking out for him," he says softly, and Lydia nods against his shoulder.

"Come on," Stiles says loudly, trying to ease the tension, "It's not like I'm a helpless infant. I can tie my own shoes and everything."

Noah rolls his eyes and Melissa hides a grin behind her hand as she takes her husband's arm and says, "Lydia, this food won't be ready for a while. Do you want to take some time to freshen up? I know you've had a long journey."

Lydia's eyes light up. "I would _love_ a bath," she said fervently, reaching up to touch the bun on top of her head. She looks fine to Stiles, but he knows that the road trip accommodations were not up to her standards.

"Hayden," Melissa says, "Go show Lydia to the master bathroom." She winks at Lydia. "I made Noah install a jetted tub, and there's bubble bath and face masks if you want."

Stiles grins at the sight of Lydia walking away towards his house, head tilted towards Hayden as the teen prattled on about who knows what. He glances around to see Noah and Melissa watching him, and he shifts awkwardly under their amused gaze.

"Uh - so I'm gonna go say 'hi' to my room," he says. "You didn't let Mason do any more weird experiments in there, did you?"

"Define 'weird,'" Melissa says with a grimace.

Stiles decides not to pursue that any further and heads back into the house. He wanders up the stairs, looking at the family pictures lined up on the wall, trails past Scott's old room (it belongs to Hayden now) and opens the door to his room. His old familiar room, with the band posters and the desk and the glass board where he used to try and solve mysteries. Mason's stuff has been tidied up, and the bed is made with fresh sheets, but there's something about it that is startlingly unfamiliar. It's been a while since he was a teen, doing homework at that desk, sleeping on that bed.

He slumps down onto the mattress - it feels flatter and less comfortable than he remembers. He reaches out and strokes the pillow, recalling how he had been unable to sleep without a particular pillow for years after his mom died. He remembers how Scott had helped him throw it away on the last night before they left for college, and how long it had taken for him to get a good night's rest after that.

"So - is there anything there?"

Stiles glances up to see his dad standing in the doorway, hands shoved in his pockets, smiling softly.

"What do you mean?" Stiles wonders, smiling in reply.

"You and Lydia," Noah asks, leaning against the doorway, head cocked curiously. "She's the first girl you've brought home in years."

Stiles tries to picture _that_ happening and fails. "Oh, yeah." He grins. "She's all over me - can't get enough."

"Hmmm." Noah's eyebrows curve up for a moment, but he doesn't press the issue. "That reminds me - Heather is coming for dinner tomorrow. She has been dying to see you and invited herself. You _are_ going to handle that this time, right?"

Stiles smiles, pushing down at the panic bubbling up in his stomach. "Oh - yeah. Totally. What time is she coming by the way?"

"Same time as Doctor Deaton." Noah squints a little. "He's been waiting for an answer a long time, son. We're all hoping that this little visit means you're finally ready to finish where you left off."

Stiles' panic is more than a bubble now - more like a whale breaching.

Two minutes later he's shoving his way into the master bathroom, hissing, "Lydia? _Lydia?_ I need your _help_!"

" _STILES_!" she shrieks, ducking eyebrow-deep into the bubble-filled water.

"Oh." He stops in his tracks and spins around to turn his back to her, breathing deeply with his hands on his hips. "Sorry. I didn't see anything, if that's what you're worried about." He turns his head to glance around at her.

"That isn't - _what are you doing here?_ " she hisses, hastily rearranging bubbles and glaring at him. "Get out!"

"No, please, I really need your help, and this is the only place no one will be listening," he says, sinking down on the rug, still facing away from her.

"Hurry up and talk so you can _leave_."

He lets out a heavy sigh, leaning his head against his knees. "Do you think you could be my girlfriend?"

There is a long pause.

"What?" Her voice is high with surprise.

"Just for a couple of days," he hastens on. "You know about Malia, but no one else does, and I really don't want to have to explain the situation to everyone."

"Why do I have to pretend to be your girlfriend?" she hissed, eyebrows raised. "Who is _everyone_?"

"It's just that there's this girl, we dated a bit in high school. Kinda the clingy type. No," he corrects himself, "more like the _crazy_ type. It's been like ten years and she still tries to back me up against the wall every time I visit home."

Lydia sighs. "Forget it, Stiles - I'm not being your buffer because you don't have the guts to just talk to this girl. Just tell her you're not interested and get it over with."

"I wish that were the only thing that was worrying me," he mumbles, his fingers shaking as he weaves them together. "There's this whole . . . you know . . . supernatural thing going on. Everyone's worried. Deaton thinks that I'm back to start my Druid training again -"

"Your _what_ training?" she says, sounding half-winded.

"It'll just be a lot easier if this is a simple visit to introduce my girlfriend to the folks. Just for a few days, _pleeeeeeeease_ . . ." He turns his head to look at her face poking up through the mountains of bubbles, and she rolls her eyes.

"You are going to owe me a _mountain_ of chocolate," she threatens. "And there will be _no_ kissing. Hand-holding is ok."

"Can I rub your knee under the table?" he asks, grinning. Her glare is answer enough. "Ok, I'm going now. Thank you thank you," he says as he rises to his feet and bows his way out of the room. "Just give me an address to send that mountain of chocolate to." He shuts the door, smiling.

Someone clears their throat behind him. He jumps about ten feet in the air and turns to see Melissa, looking at him with raised eyebrows and a grin. "I - uh - brought extra towels for Lydia," she said. "You want me to get some for you?"

Stiles' face is on fire, and he clears his throat. "Um, no. That's ok. I took a shower at the hotel this morning and I'm all clean!" He edges around her and flees back to his room.

Twilight is falling by the time Melissa calls him down for dinner. It's a very simple affair; grilled burgers, chips, and grapes on plastic plates, and Stiles is half-expecting Lydia to turn up her nose at it. To his surprise, however, she digs into the burger with every evidence of relish, and even goes back for seconds, complementing Noah with dimples so deep that the sheriff of Beacon Hills is actually struck dumb. Stiles leans his arm over her chair, which makes her roll her eyes, but she doesn't shove him away so he figures it's ok. After they are finished eating, Stiles hangs around the cooling grill in the cooling darkness, chatting quietly with his dad as fireflies blink in the grass.

"Any updates about the case?" he asks, glancing over where Lydia is seated in a folding chair, head tilted up as she gazes at the stars. He isn't eager to remind her of her past trauma - or to frighten her with the news that her attacker is just next door.

Noah shakes his head. "The kitsune - Noshiko - hasn't gotten word back to us yet."

"Do you think she's dead?" Stiles asks.

"Well, it's been more than a month now. I don't think he would keep someone like her alive for so long - and if he has, than he's more dangerous than we thought. The kind of forethought it would require to keep that woman locked up is . . . terrifying." He sighed. "I think Scott blames himself for the whole thing."

Stiles tries to keep his tone light. "Of course he does - he's _Scott_. He's coming to dinner tomorrow, right?"

"He wanted to come to meet you tonight, but," Noah nodded over their heads at the full moon shining like a blank quarter set against the velvet sky.

"Yeah, I get it." Stiles is so used to missing Scott that it's almost a daily ache, and talking about it doesn't make it better. He sees Melissa start to clear the table, so he says goodnight to Noah and heads into the kitchen to help with the dishes. Lydia is already there, working companionably side by side with Melissa, and she meets Stiles' gaze with a very neutral expression. Once the dishes are done and Stiles has finished sweeping, Lydia turns to Melissa.

"Where would you like me to sleep?"

Melissa stares at her. "Uh, well, we assumed you'd be sharing Stiles' room."

"Oh - right." Lydia nods, biting her lips.

"Is that not ok?" Melissa looks between them with concern. "I guess Hayden could sleep on the couch and -"

"No." Lydia touches Melissa's shoulder and smiles. "It's fine."

Stiles follows her upstairs, changing into his pajamas in his room while she's performing her rituals in the bathroom. Then she comes in and slides into bed, yawning heavily, while Stiles glumly heads towards the office chair beside the desk. Lydia watches him curling up in the chair with a chagrined expression.

"That looks so uncomfortable that _my_ neck is hurting." She sighs heavily and pats the bed next to her. "Come up here."

He's about to protest that he used to sleep in the chair all the time in high school, but stops himself just in time and clambers into bed next to her. The next few minutes are silent, with a few interjections, as they try to arrange themselves comfortably in the twin bed with the minimum of touching.

"Nope - can't sleep on the left side."

"Well _I_ 'm going to end up on the floor if you're going to sprawl everywhere like that."

"You're getting that face goop all over Mason's pillow."

"He can wash it. That's something people _do_."

Finally they are both arranged somewhat comfortably, him on his side facing away from her, her laying on her back staring up at the ceiling. It's a lot easier to talk when he's not looking at her, so he says: "Hey, thanks for helping me out with this. I promise that mountain of chocolate will be worth your while."

"I'm beginning to think you plan these things purposely to watch me embarrass myself," she mutters.

He laughs under his breath. "It is kinda fun, I admit," he murmurs. "How do you feel about spooning?"

"Do. Not," she hisses. "Touch me."

Of course, when he wakes up the next morning, every one of his gangly limbs is wrapped around some appendage of hers, and when he tries to remove himself without waking her, she murmurs in her sleep and turns towards him, one hand snaking over his back and the other gripping the front of his shirt. Her hair smells like flowers in the sun, and she is exactly the right height for him to tuck her head under his chin. Of course, he's just in the process of discovering this when she stirs and he finds himself staring into her huge green eyes.

"Now, before you get mad, just ask yourself - who's touching whom, _hmmm_?" he asks as innocently as possible in his current position.

"Did you sleep well?" Melissa asks, smiling as she sets out a bowl and spoon for Lydia at the breakfast table.

She shoots Stiles a look that speaks volumes. "Mmmm," is all she says.

"Sorry, babe," he says, winking outrageously as he pours milk onto his cereal. "I keep telling her, if she likes to cuddle, she should have gone after the guy from Wall Street. I was prying myself out of her clutches _all_ night."

A faint color rises to her cheeks and she shovels food into her mouth without a word. Noah enters the room, dressed in his sheriff's uniform, glancing at Stiles before helping himself to breakfast. "Deaton just called - he's on his way over."

Stiles chokes on his cereal, and Liam pounds on his back in a commiserating way.

"Relax, it's not about you," Noah rolls his eyes. Stiles follows his gaze to where Lydia is sitting.

 _Oh, right_.

Lydia is just putting in an earring when Melissa calls her downstairs to talk to the doctor. She enters the living room with a curious expression, glancing around at Stiles, Mason, and Deaton, a question in the curve of her eyebrows.

"We haven't met, Miss Martin," Deaton said with a faint smile. "My name is Alan Deaton. Stiles texted me about your particular circumstances before you arrived."

"Ah." Lydia sits on the edge of the couch and smooths out her miniskirt over her legs, taking a second to glare at Stiles before turning back to Deaton with a perfectly smooth face. "You think you can help me? Get these terrible voices out of my head - the visions?"

"Well," Deaton replies softly, looking closely at her face. "I don't know if that's possible. But I think I might have some answers for you, to help you understand what you are."

"What I am?" Lydia repeats, frowning. "Stiles said he thought I was something, too. What does that mean? Like a werewolf?"

"Not exactly a werewolf. If I'm right, then I can take you to someone who can help you - someone who is like you."

"You've met others like me?" Two bright spots of color have risen high on Lydia's cheeks. "What do you mean - like me?"

Deaton's eyes are soft as they measure her. "Just two," he murmurs. "One of them, Meredith, lives here in town. The other was named Lorraine."

Lydia's gasp is so loud that Melissa looks up in alarm from the kitchen.

Deaton nods in response to her unspoken question. "Lorraine Martin."


End file.
